We've begun our study of Biology in an unusual place: the brain!
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| This is your brain on Crayolas (courtesy of Wikipedia) |
Let's leave aside "why?" for a moment and look at the pros and cons of this choice.
On the positive side:
- the brain is fascinating,
- it leads to great questions,
- it is connected to other body systems in a myriad of ways,
- and it represents a significant sample organ though which one can view the evolution of the animal kingdom.
That's a lot of pluses! Each of those has incredible value, either as an atmospheric impact (the fascination part), as an instructional target (body systems and organization, evolution), or as a way to promote science skills (developing questions).
On the negative side:
- um, I have no idea how it "works" (beyond the basic electro-chemical stimulation idea)
- the brain has special vocabulary words that are awkward and plentiful and (often) Latin. It's the Great Biology Problem* scaled down to three pounds of squishy, fatty, folded tissue.
*How do you keep the most fascinating set of ideas from becoming an endless list of things that have parts that have smaller parts which, in turn have smaller parts, etc.?
So, two negatives. The first is easily overcome - for our purposes - with a little reading and some absorption time. The second is where a "transferable skill" can come into play! The problem at its core is one where a teacher needs to generate intrigue and interest in an area (vocab acquisition) that can be deadly dull. How do we promote the use of the correct scientific terms without the course grinding to a halt while we memorize a list of 20+ definitions?
My response - and, let's be clear, there are dozens of better ones, I'm sure - was to create a table where students would work together to fill in nicknames for brain parts, then create a mnemonic device to cement function and/or location of those parts. As input, I provided a handy list of the parts and their functions along with a couple of clear diagrams where we collectively identified lobes and such. The handout, for this activity, looked a bit like this:
Working together, students discuss the functions and location of major and minor parts of the brain, "boil down" their major functions, then have some fun creating nicknames and memory devices. I don't need to "know biology" to anticipate that this lesson would need some form of light touch that would tap into student creativity.
Finally, this kind of activity need not be a one-time effort. We can re-visit this as our understanding of the brain develops - perhaps a quick warm-up in the near future will be to have students generate three better nicknames for any of the parts they feel they understand better.
As I move forward, I'll keep an eye out for how often pure content knowledge turns out to be the critical path in a lesson. For now, I remain confident that I'll be tapping in to my transferable skills very frequently!
