Woman Crush Wednesday: Jane Cooke Wright

Display slide 8. Go over the rules of the game before moving outside or to your open space:

1. To better understand the effects of the uncontrolled division of cancer cells, take students to an open space to engage in the following tagging game that simulates cell division.

2. Start Round One like a normal tagging game with one tagger.

3. Explain that this tagger is an abnormal cell that is replicating out of control. Every time a new person is tagged they become a replicating cell and can start tagging too.

4. Set a time limit based on your class size.

5. Play Round One of the game once or twice.

6. Discuss what they noticed and felt as taggers or “cells” that began to replicate.

Describe instructions for Round Two:

1. Designate 3-5 students, depending on the size of your class, as “Treatment.”

2. Assign “Treatment” taggers to tag the taggers (the cells replicating out of control).

3. Let students know that “Treatment” taggers cannot be tagged themselves.

4. Before Round Two begins, announce that, when a “Treatment” tagger tags one of the “out of control cells,” that person has to freeze and can no longer tag others. 

Have students play Round Two once or twice. When you think it is time to end the game, ask the students the following questions:

1. What did you notice about each of the two rounds?

2. Were the “Treatment” taggers able to able to stop all of the “out of control cells?”

3. Were some “out of control cells” able to evade treatment?

4. How did the students being chased by the taggers feel knowing that the “Treatment” students could stop the “replicating cell” students?

Display slide 9. Ask students to use the prompts on the slide to discuss what happened in both rounds of tag. Encourage them to see the connection between the tagging game and what happens when cancer cells begin to replicate. Ask them to connect treatment group (in the game) with the technology Jane Cooke Wright worked on to attack rapidly growing cells.