Aseptic technique, culturing, selection, resistance genes, and data reliability.
Your PLTW coursework: Medical Interventions ▸ Unit 1: How to Fight Infection ▸ Lesson 1.2 Antibiotic Treatment ▸ "Project 1.2.3 Attack of the Superbugs", "Activity 1.2.4 When Antibiotics Fail"
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 - Growing the evidence: aseptic culturing and superbug data
Use to bacteria and analyze a superbug to evaluate how resistance is selected.
- 1Review steps and identify two ways could ruin your plate.
- 2Streak or inoculate your (or run the simulation) using clean, moves.
- 3Label your plate with date, sample, and your initials before .
- 4Open the superbug and find which colonies survived after exposure.
- 5Identify evidence of or in the dataset.
- 6Write one sentence judging whether the data are reliable and what could improve them.
- • You will be able to apply when culturing bacteria.
- • You will be able to read a resistance dataset for evidence of selection.
- • You will be able to evaluate the reliability of data.
Daily lessons this week
Open any day for its full lesson, the work due that day, and guided notes.
Written CER on risky research: position with specific safeguards, evidence about benefit and containment risk, reasoning, and rebuttal.
Numbered procedure, routes list, explanation of why plates are kept closed, rules for cultures and waste, and contamination prediction sketch.
: colony count, size estimate, color, shape, edge type for target colonies; separate tally for colonies.
HGT mechanism definitions, conjugation diagram with labeled parts, multi-resistance explanation, -data application scenario, and linking sentence connecting culturing to resistance to stewardship.
Quick intro to the week
- Hook: a single careless touch can contaminate a plate, just like one careless habit can breed a superbug.
- Today's goal: bacteria cleanly and read a superbug table for how resistance gets selected.
- Tie-in to Monday's stewardship debate: selection pressure is why overusing antibiotics backfires.
- Reminder: your checklist and data analysis are graded in the PLTW course shell.
Your PLTW coursework this week
Do this: Advance the PLTW Unit 1 culturing-and-resistance benchmark in the online course shell with your superbug data analysis.
- • keeps cultures free of contaminating organisms.
- • Selection pressure lets resistant colonies outgrow susceptible ones.
- • bacteria using .
- • Identify and in a resistance dataset.
📋 PLTW tracker evidence due this week: checklist and a superbug data reliability analysis.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wednesday | Wed, Sep 30 | Bioethics debate: research vs risk | Written CER on risky pathogen research: position with specific safeguards, evidence about benefit and containment risk, reasoning, and rebuttal. |
| Thursday | Thu, Oct 1 | Aseptic technique | Numbered aseptic technique procedure, contamination routes list, explanation of why plates are kept closed, safety rules for cultures and waste, and contamination prediction sketch. |
| Friday | Fri, Oct 2 | Culturing and colony data lab | Colony data table: colony count, size estimate, color, shape, edge type for target colonies; separate tally for contamination colonies. |
| Thursday | - | Mutation, HGT, and superbugs | HGT mechanism definitions, conjugation diagram with labeled parts, multi-resistance explanation, colony-data application scenario, and linking sentence connecting culturing to resistance to stewardship. |
- M: debate + aseptic checklist
- T: culture plan
- W: data / image analysis
- Th: superbug claim
- F: no school
Due by week's end: Superbug lab data table or image-analysis packet.
4 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.
Lab day: what to bring & watch
This explainer accompanies the PLTW lab protocol: watch it before lab.
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: Virtual resistance case dataset.
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:
CDC Antibiotic ResistanceVocabulary
Virtual resources
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.
Use this if you were absent, got stuck, or need another pass before you submit the lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched Culturing, , superbugs by path:Medical-Interventions/Unit-1_How-to-Fight-Infection/00_Unit-Overview. Score 126. Visibility: student-schoology (student-facing resource; link through Schoology rather than local path).
Open this when the class reaches this activity and use it to complete the required lesson artifact.
Placement rationale
Matched Culturing, , superbugs by path:Medical-Interventions/Unit-1_How-to-Fight-Infection/1.2_-Treatment. Score 126. 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.