Sharing Flow - About the Kit

The lesson plans in this kit are designed to help teachers of high school students. These lessons use the film Flow as a tool for teaching the topic of organ and tissue donation. The lesson plans are also designed to be adaptable to settings outside the classroom. Students in service learning projects can use many of the lessons. With the exception of the research project, all can be taught with nothing more than a VCR and a blackboard. There are a number of classes into which this film would fit. Driver’s Education is an obvious one because many young people are faced with the choice of organ and tissue donation for the first time when they receive their driver’s license. These lessons are also appropriate for classes in Health, Social Studies, English and Science.

At the end of some of these lessons, there are Community Outreach Options that can extend the lesson beyond the classroom. Students and others involved in Service Learning Projectsespecially will find these options useful in designing outreach efforts that have a wider impact within their communities.

Each lesson is designed to stand alone. They do not need to be used in conjunction with each other to be useful. The amount of time that will be necessary for each lesson ranges from one class period to projects which can last several weeks, depending on the needs of the teacher and what is appropriate for their students. The plans are designed to appeal to students at all skill levels. Some are very basic, but all can be adapted to students with more highly developed skills. In addition to the obvious connections to science, health, and driver’s education, the lessons also contribute to teaching topics and skills such as:

• Current Issues in Science, Medicine and Lifestyle
• Issues of Life and Death as presented in Social Studies classes
• Formulations of Values, Attitudes, and Beliefs
• Discussing and Debating Issues
  
• Developing the Value of Empathy
  
• Developing Critical Thinking Skills such as observing, comparing, summarizing, interpreting, criticizing, looking for assumptions, collecting and organizing data, decision making, applying facts and principles in new situations.
• Media Literacy: How information about an issue may be presented dramatically in narrative form through essays or script writing.