Biopsy, imaging, staging, chemo, radiation, targeted therapy, response, side effects.
Your PLTW coursework: Medical Interventions ▸ Unit 3: How to Conquer Cancer ▸ Lesson 3.4 Building a Better Cancer Treatment ▸ "Activity 3.4.3 Clinical Trials"
What to do if absent- CER:
- Claim, Evidence, Reasoning: make a claim, back it with evidence, explain your reasoning.
- SOP:
- Standard Operating Procedure, the exact steps to follow (especially in a lab).
- Tracker:
- Your PLTW progress log where you record completed evidence.
- myPLTW:
- The PLTW course site where you do the online activities. Find it in Clever with your Microsoft sign-in, right next to Schoology.
Week overview - From Biopsy to Plan: Treating Cancer
Use staging and patient outcome data to compare , radiation, and and justify a treatment recommendation.
- 1Open the patient outcome packet in the PLTW course shell and read the staging key before reviewing any case.
- 2For one patient, write down the result and the stage, then say in one sentence what the stage means.
- 3Make a quick three-column note comparing , radiation, and with one effect and one each.
- 4Find the response data for two patients and circle which therapy showed the better response.
- 5Write a recommendation for your patient and back it with one piece of outcome evidence using the word .
- 6Add one question for the Monday clinical-trial-access debate about who can join experimental treatments.
- • You'll be able to explain what staging tells a care team.
- • You'll be able to compare , radiation, and .
- • You'll be able to justify a treatment choice using patient response data.
Daily lessons this week
Open any day for its full lesson, the work due that day, and guided notes.
One-sentence final stance plus the patient-facing reason you would give for your position.
Diagnostic- ticket: ordered steps from through assigned stage, plus your stage-to-treatment sentence.
CER paragraph arguing which treatment (chemo or radiation) is more appropriate for a localized , with and side-effect evidence.
Two-column table comparing and , with qualifying-patient markup and resistance explanation.
treatment recommendation memo citing /stage/marker data, naming side effects, and specifying a monitoring criterion.
Quick intro to the week
- Today matters because diagnosing is only step one; the real work is choosing a treatment that fits the patient.
- Goal for today: read staging and response data and turn it into a defensible treatment recommendation.
- Monday's debate is clinical-trial access: when standard care runs out, who gets a shot at experimental therapy?
- Your case analysis and recommendation are graded from what you turn in, so submit them on the class site.
Your PLTW coursework this week
Do this: Advance the Unit 3 -treatment benchmark by submitting your data-backed treatment recommendation on the class site.
- • A samples so it can be examined, and staging describes how far has spread.
- • and radiation harm fast-dividing cells while aims at specific features.
- • is programmed cell death that many treatments try to trigger in cells.
- • Interpret a stage to guide a .
- • Compare treatment options using patient response data.
📋 Tracker evidence due this week: your staged patient case with a data-backed treatment recommendation submitted to the class site.
All PLTW activities are completed inside the PLTW course environment: this page only gives direction.
This week's PLTW tracker
Your week at a glance. Check off each deliverable as you finish it, then submit so Mr. Mendoza can see how the class is pacing.
Use the code Mr. Mendoza gave you, not your name. Saved on this device.
| Day | Date | Focus | Key deliverable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | Tue, Nov 10 | Trial-access debate | One-sentence final stance plus the patient-facing reason you would give for your position. |
| Thursday | Thu, Nov 12 | Biopsy and staging | Diagnostic-workflow ticket: ordered steps from biopsy through assigned stage, plus your stage-to-treatment sentence. |
| Friday | Fri, Nov 13 | Chemo and radiation | CER paragraph arguing which treatment (chemo or radiation) is more appropriate for a localized tumor, with apoptosis and side-effect evidence. |
| Monday | Mon, Nov 16 | Targeted therapy | Two-column table comparing targeted therapy and chemotherapy, with qualifying-patient markup and resistance explanation. |
| Tuesday | Tue, Nov 17 | Treatment recommendation memo | Cancer treatment recommendation memo citing biopsy/stage/marker data, naming side effects, and specifying a monitoring criterion. |
- M: trial access debate
- T: diagnosis evidence
- W: treatment comparison
- Th: patient plan
- F: case memo
Due by week's end: Cancer treatment recommendation memo.
5 panels from the illustrated semester.
Fiction. There is no such student. The lessons, labs and dates are the real planned course; the student, the classmates and the conversations are invented.
What to do when absent
Most days, this class is your PLTW coursework: and PLTW is online and individual. So being out usually just means doing exactly what we did in class, from home.
Open Clever, then myPLTWHow to get there: open Clever and sign in with your Microsoft (district) account. Both myPLTW and Schoology are in Clever. Do the activity in myPLTW. Turn the work in on this site or hand it to Mr. Mendoza, because that is the step that counts as submitted. Schoology only shows your report-card grade later.
You can't do those from home: do this instead: Patient outcome packet.
Class still runs. A substitute will post today's plan: complete the online activity above; it's built to be self-guided. Need the concept taught without a teacher? Use this authoritative explainer:
National Cancer Institute: Types of cancer treatmentVocabulary
Teacher-posted resources
Classroom documents for this lesson are posted in Schoology. Open Clever, then Schoology, and find each one by the name shown on its card.
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched treatment and therapeutic choices by path:Medical-Interventions/Unit-3_How-to-Conquer-Cancer/3.3_Treating-Cancer; keywords:, radiation, cancer. Score 146. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Use this if you were absent, got stuck, or need another pass before you submit the lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched treatment and therapeutic choices by path:Medical-Interventions/Unit-3_How-to-Conquer-Cancer/3.4_Building-a-Better-Cancer-Treatment; keywords:treatment, cancer. Score 142. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
How to get there: open Clever and sign in with your Microsoft (district) account. Both myPLTW and Schoology are in Clever. Do the activity in myPLTW. Turn the work in on this site or hand it to Mr. Mendoza, because that is the step that counts as submitted. Schoology only shows your report-card grade later.