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Sleeping Habits and Academic Performance

Nadia Amin

NAmin@schools.nyc.gov

Edward R Murrow High School

 

INTRODUCTION:

Many students have issues keeping focus on an AP exam and are unable to finish an exam in the allocated time.  Some students fall asleep, some stare into the ceiling and others just lay their head down. Every scenario mentioned is a disruption in the students’ nervous system depending on the amount of sleep they had the evening before. The classroom AP Exam mimics the time given on the actual AP Biology Exam in May.  These students are at risk of performing negatively on the actual exam in May and reduce their chance of getting the college credits after sitting in a class for a year.  Imagine Anna sat in an AP Biology class for a whole year with Mrs. Amin. She learned, took notes and did all her classroom assessments and scored well. When it came time for the classroom exams, she would fall asleep while reading the questions. At times, she would just stare with eyes open and not blinking .  Her exam category in her overall grade suffered tremendously. She was able to pass the class with a 70 but wawa unable to get more than a 2 on the actual exam. No university or college accepted her credits and Anna had to repeat the course in college.

 

 

TASK

A student task force has been created at ERMHS and your group is the board of the task force. You have been assigned to combat the issue that your peers do not get adequate sleep for them to have stamina to complete an exam and perform well on their assessments. Your job is to create a PPA Slide Presentation to share with all the AP students in your school to help advise them on ways to combat this issue and increase academic performance of your classmates within your school.  This will be completed within 4 periods (a total of 2- 90-minute blocks).

 

PROCESS

The students will be grouped in fours. One student that is excelling in the class. One student that is performing negatively on assessments and two students in the middle range. The two students in the middle range can be pushed in either direction of the academic performance scale. Please use the resources available in each step to help you build your presentation. Please also include your personal experiences with sleep and your academics to help you create the PPA.

 

1.   Define the Problem

Watch the following two videos to help you identify the problem

https://youtu.be/bom6ZrVwGIc?si=WsQOL0hxtp4C9L51

https://youtu.be/RFJ6hNxQD-s

2.   Gather the Evidence

Use the following two articles to help you gather statistical data to support your problem

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10900033/

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/10/among-teens-sleep-deprivation-an-epidemic.html

 

3.   Identify the Causes

Create a survey with 5 questions to have students fill out anonymously that can indicate causes for the lack of sleep. Pick the top 3 most common causes and focus on them.

 

4.   Evaluate an Existing Policy

Use the CDC guidelines in the link provided below as an existing policy that can be used to compare the results of your surveys.

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/features/students-sleep.htm#:~:text=The%20American%20Academy%20of%20Sleep,10%20hours%20per%2024%20hours.

 

5.  Develop Solutions

As the designated task force, please develop solutions to the problem after gathering all the evidence and information. Please use the link to help you discuss as a group multiple policies to tackle the situation. Click on Develop solutions above.

 

6.  Select the Best Solution  (Feasibility vs. Effectiveness)

Use the chart provided here to plot the policies your task force has developed to see which would be most effective in combating the problem.

 

EVALUATION

PPA Rubric - Google Slides Rubric

Survey Rubric - Survey Rubric

 

CONCLUSION

In this unit, you became experts on the issue of sleeping habits and academic performance. You learned the statistics of academic performance, the causes of not sleeping enough, the existing policies created to solve the problem of academic performance, and you even came up with your own solutions to this problem. You took your expertise to the next level by presenting this knowledge to students in freshman, sophomore, junior and senior orientations.

 

STANDARDS:  

NGSS Science Standards - High School

https://www.nextgenscience.org/sites/ngss/files/HS%20LS%20DCI%20combinedf.pdf

NGSS Social Studies Standards - High school

https://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/k-12-social-studies-framework