21 Jun 2021
Life is sweet! Or that’s what Year 12 Biology would have you believe. The class have managed to model the body’s immune response when a pathogen enters the body using stop motion and supermarket lollies.
The response, which is extremely complicated and relies on several concurrent processes was played out by the students on butcher’s paper. Marshmallows stood in for macrophages, jubes turned into T-Cells and nerds became cytokines as the multiday process was reduced to a 20-second animation.
The act of animating the body’s response was a way for students to model the innate and adaptive immune system, which covers a point in the HSC syllabus. There are a lot of moving parts in the response, so plotting them out and animating them is a great way to engage the students and give them a better understanding of how the body responds to pathogens.
Says Year 12 Biology Teacher Kylie Mullavey, “I think it went really well. Most of the students got a deeper understanding of the body’s immune response and it has really helped them remember the names of the cells and processes."
Take a look at the video below and see for yourself.