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STUDENTS PLAY DETECTIVE IN FORENSICS

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GDS HIGHLIGHTS

GDS HIGHLIGHTS

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ANALYZED blood-spatter patterns, reconstructed crime scenes, and learned data-gathering techniques in a forensics course that’s not for the faint of heart.

Second graders visited a Jacob Lawrence exhibit at the Phillips Collection, known for its focus on modern and contemporary art.

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As part of the dynamic communities and change curriculum in 9th grade history, students visited Ft. Reno, a Civil War post built on the highest ground of the city, and Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood with a robust Latin community.

Tenth graders studying the Renaissance and Dutch “Golden Age” visited the National Gallery of Art.

A High School genetics and evolutionary biology class visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where they sorted microfossils to recreate ecosystems.

GDS Corps, the Middle School community engagement and experiential learning (CEEL) program, connects students to sites all across the city. Eighth graders studying environmental justice, for example, visited the Southeast riverside neighborhood of Anacostia. Sixth graders are on a quest to visit every ward in the city with CEEL.

During a back-to-school scavenger hunt, 8th graders explored the National Mall.

Students in forensics are eager to try techniques they have watched on television, said High School science department chair Nina Butler-Roberts. Part of her work is to teach them how to analyze carefully, drawing upon the scientific approaches from the course as well as what they have learned throughout their STEM education.

The culminating activity in the forensic serology unit, which involves the study of blood detection and identification, was a “wonderful intermingling of disciplines,” Nina said. She challenged students to reconstruct a crime scene reflecting a logical and plausible sequence of events based on the evidence they were assigned. They dove into topics covered in biology, chemistry, physics, and trigonometry as they worked to replicate blood-spatter patterns they had studied throughout the unit.

“It was unlike any other lab I’ve done,” Ally Brangham ’23 said. Ally’s group worked to create the high-pressured, intermittent jet pattern characteristic of an arterial squirt, the result of a ruptured artery. Their first attempt at using a pinpricked balloon to propel the fake blood didn’t give them a direct enough spurt, so they switched to pumping it with a syringe to mimic the pulsing of an artery.

Jackson Scarrow ’24 described the problem-solving approach that he, Xander Grunwaldt ’24, and Isa Martorana ’24 applied to the angles of impact as they worked to create a spatter and wall-drip effect. Their several attempts at pounding dye-soaked sponges with hammers did indeed splatter fake blood, perhaps too well. “Some of it ended up on the floor and walls of the science lab,” he said, sounding delighted by the messy evidence of learning.

“The excitement and creativity that students brought to the recreation of the crime scenes were a lot of fun for me as a teacher to observe,” Nina said. “Because forensics is multidisciplinary, it requires students to analyze and apply their knowledge of the course topics in ways that were unexpected, but ultimately enjoyable, for them.”

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