Disease Diary Examples and a Free High School Anatomy and Physiology Project

I think my favorite thing about teaching Anatomy & Physiology to high school students is that it feels applicable to real life every single day. The first science class I ever taught was freshman biology, and I heard a student mutter “When am I ever going to need this?” every other day. With A&P it’s different - every student has a body, and as we explore new A&P concepts, students uncover more and more about how their own body is structured and how it functions. Even though it’s a difficult class, students love it because it’s incredibly relatable.

Now of course, one of the very first learning objectives we cover in A&P is that students will be able to explain why the study of anatomy and physiology is important to understanding and treating diseases, disorders, and injuries. The Disease Diary Project is an incredible, low lift for the teacher, material-free way for students to continually return to this learning objective all year as they learn about new organ systems in the body. I’ll show you an example of a Disease Diary entry, and then you can snag my free Disease Diary Project sheet (print and digital) at the end of this post!

Implementing the Disease Diary

The Disease Diary is simple - every time we finish an organ system, students choose a disease or disorder that affects that body system, and they write a diary entry based on their research of the disease. I usually have my students work on their diary in a running Google Doc that I have access to and I informally check in on their progress when I have the time to make sure students are continuously adding entries when we finish a system. A great chunk of class time students can dedicate to their entry is class time after that finish their unit exam on test day, but I do frequently have this as an on-you-own-time assignment. At the end of each quarter, I have students download their cumulative disease diary to a PDF and submit it for feedback and a project grade for that quarter.

Example Diary Entry Components

Here’s an example of how you can structure the requirements for each disease or disorder:

•Name of disease

•Description of disease

•Causes and risk factors

•Signs and symptoms

•How diagnosis occurs

•Treatment

•Prevention

•Prognosis

•How the disease affects the body system you are writing about

•2 references

I almost always keep the Disease Diary as a writing project where students are fully developing a written entry for each disease or disorder, but I have had some classes where a Google Slide deck was a more appropriate option. Instead of writing chunks of text for this project, you could have students create a visual presentation of their diary with a Google Slides presentation. I have included both options in the free assignment sheet at the end of this post!

If you would like to implement the Disease Diary as one of your projects, then this freebie is for you! Click here to download a copy of the assignment sheet that I give my students for this project - I’ve included it as both a PDF and a Google Doc! Have fun with your Disease DIaries!