Photo courtesy of: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thecodingmachine/utils.graphics.mouf-imagine/HEAD/doc/img/imagine.jpg
As I've started really planning out the year on a day by day and unit basis my ideas are blossoming and changing. My interest in teaching through art- poems, movies, painting, art design/installations, music videos, music itself, performance art by use of skits and video creation- has exploded. As I search for new ideas and techniques about how to teach a given concept I find that I am now drawn to art as a way to deliver the message but also as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding in a creative way. IMAGINEIT Phase 3
Backwards Design Plan
Results
Neuroscience attempts to explain how the brain takes in information through the sensory systems and integrates and encodes that information via molecular and cellular processes in neurons to allow humans to have sensation, consciousness and thoughts. It is essential that students understand the different levels of analysis: molecular, cellular, systems, behavior, and cognitive neuroscience. They need to have an appreciation for how those underlying processes build to create a seamless representation of ourselves and the world around us. It also tries to explain “normal” functioning in the brain in an effort to help people who suffer from a variety of brain disorders.
At the end of this course I want students to see the role of their brain in everything they think, see and don’t see, do or don’t do, feel, interact with, literally EVERYTHING. I also want them to see that these processes that we are largely unaware of shape the person they are and the way they see themselves and other people. I hope that as they gain a new perspective and understanding of themselves they will, in turn, learn to appreciate other people for everything they are. I hope that this biology that drives us and shapes us and the fact that it is common among all of us will lend a basis for understanding others- as the same and not different from us. I want them to gain a new understanding of society based on this new understanding of themselves as a biological organism with the same parts and processes as everyone else. The way we feel about other people is more about us than about them in terms of how they make us feel, if that makes sense. Something that seems as obvious as what we see as we walk down the street is actually a very individualized experience shaped by everything we have experienced before that in our lives. Stephanie Pruitt states, in her work Close Reading “Notice what is there and not. Notice patterns. Notice what you notice.” Making students notice what they notice as they go about their day gives them a basis of understanding themselves from a new perspective and can challenge them to try to notice new, perhaps more positive things as they navigate through their day. Encouraging them to think about their own thinking is something they may have never considered before taking Neuroscience.
One big idea that I would like for my students to uncover in first semester is how the brain communicates at the cellular level via electrical activity. My idea for the year is about perspective and how that changes the way we experience the world. The foundation of that idea, of course, comes down to how the brain communicates in the first place. This is integral to the study of neuroscience because all brain processes use this mechanism to carry out basic and complicated functions. The patterns of neuronal activity is how our brain makes sense of the world around us. What we choose to see in the world is driven by our brain activity and grounded in all of our prior life experiences. Those patterns of activity started to be laid out from the moment of cellular differentiation when pluripotent cells were “chosen” to become brain cells. How incredible! How can it be that this simple electrical surge creates everything we know- the perception of ourselves, the perception of others, coordinates our bodily functions, and drives our sensory systems? In order to bring this process to life I have to be able to make it tangible- the cellular level is too small for students to experience directly given the constraints of a high school classroom. This struggle of too small to see is something I hope to eradicate this year by making my class more dynamic and by bringing these big ideas to the surface by finding corollaries in another dimension.
Evidence and Performances
Evidence of emerging understanding will be gauged by having students write and post weekly journal entries online about what they are learning in class and about themselves and society at large based on their investigations in class. This record of their thoughts will allow the students and me to see the evolution of their thinking processes and what they are taking away from the class each week. Feedback will be given to the students via an ongoing GoogleDoc that is shared with me. Luckily I only teach one section of Neuroscience this year so weekly feedback is an attainable goal. I also like to periodically survey my students using Google Forms about the course and what they and I can improve on as the year progresses. This anonymous feedback is invaluable as it maintains trust, communication and shows how invested I am in their happiness and success in the class. As a class we review the results of these surveys and discuss them as a class so I can show them that I have read and digested their feedback and we make plans together to change the direction of a unit or the class as a whole if the surveys suggest that is needed. This flexibility and responsiveness to student needs has been very successful in years past.
More specifically, in my unit about membrane potential and action potentials for example, I plan to start with a relevant world of wonder and an investigation using a plasma ball. The world of wonder will center around patterns in nature: lightening, leaves, branches of a tree, neurons, veins in the body. We will also explore Lichtenberg figures which are essentially lightening in glass. I have looked into making these as a class if I can locate and borrow the necessary materials from the Physics department. These explain how photocopiers work!! For the plasma ball, how does it generate electricity? How does that electricity travel through the “empty space” inside the ball? What is electricity and voltage? These ideas will be explored using a variety of hands-on demonstrations including lighting up a fluorescent bulbs and spectrum tubes by holding it near the ball, using diffraction grating to identify noble gases present in the ball, hearing EMR when a person touches an audio cable and the ball, seeing electrical sparks by placing a penny on top as well as the interference of signals in a cellular phone when it’s near the plasma ball. All of these demonstrations will make students really think deeply and wonder about electricity (I hope!). Once we have a thorough understanding of electricity we can then relate all these ideas to the brain which also communicates via electrical signaling even though we are not plugged in to an energy source. Some of the performances students can use to demonstrate understanding will include a stop-motion video explaining membrane potentials and action potentials or using spiker boxes to explain how electricity flows through a cockroach leg and is able to move to music that is run through the leg. Students can create an instructional video with a song of their choice to explain what is happening at the cellular level to produce movement. Bringing the molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience components to life is an integral part of my new approach to the course. I want students to produce many tangible products in class that they can explain based on their newfound understanding.
Learning Experience and Instruction
I teach at Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago. Lane is a large, selective enrollment high school of over 4,200 students. The size of the school allows for us to have the largest variety of STEAM electives in the state. Students can experience specialized courses that most people do not have the opportunity to take until college. Three years ago I was fortunate enough to start a Neuroscience elective at Lane which is a Junior/Senior level advanced science elective. Neuroscience is an inherently interesting course that students are excited about taking. One of the main challenges of the course is all of the new vocabulary: neuronal structures, brain areas, parts of the sensory systems, molecular cascades, etc. There’s a seemingly endless amount of new words and classifications that students are faced with learning in each chapter. Putting all those compartmentalized ideas and new vocabulary together so they see how all those processes work together to create the world in and outside of our minds is just another layer of difficulty that students face.
Another major challenge for students was learning about the cellular mechanism of brain function- action potentials. It’s a very complicated topic that requires students to apply what they learned in physics to their own biology. Even though I approached this topic in a variety of ways, most students were completely lost in this unit. Another challenge is the intimidation factor of such a high level course. Students had trouble making sense of the readings by themselves to the point I’m not sure if most of them even read the book as we went along because it felt like they were reading a foreign language.
For this course, I have acquired 15 Chromebooks, 8 “makey-makey” kits, copper tape, batteries and LED’s from Donors Choose as well 15 spiker boxes which I have from the first year. My room has two sides to it- one side has stadium seating, a projector and whiteboard and the other has lab benches and chairs where students can pair up and work together.
As I've started planning out the year on a day by day and unit basis my ideas are blossoming and changing. My interest in teaching through art- poems, movies, painting, art design/installations, music videos, music itself, performance art by use of skits and video creation- has exploded. As I search for new ideas and techniques about how to teach a given concept I find that I am now drawn to art as a way to deliver the message, but also as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding in a creative way. I plan to employ a variety of instructional strategies to try and bring the course to life this year through the use of artistic expression. I plan to start everyday with a world of wonder for the first several weeks of school to challenge students to start thinking about the world around them in a new way. Perhaps I will have students present their own as the year progresses, we will see! I will also start each unit with an inquiry type investigation or piece of art as a way to spark curiosity for the rest of the unit. I also think that storytelling and role playing could be a fun way to learn about the history of neuroscience. Students could act as a particular famous neuroscientist or case study as a way to really get at the heart of that person’s contribution to the field. They can use the improv skills we learned at Second City to act as an expert of a particular condition where their responses to everyday questions must reflect deep understanding of that person's perspective based on their malady. Online and hands-on simulations are also a way to bring the course to life since most of what we discuss is happening at a level we cannot see or experience directly. I hope to find an oscilloscope simulation online for our unit about action potentials so students can discover what happens when ion concentrations change. We will also do several hands on labs: brain and eye dissections, mberry taste testing, spiker boxes to investigate action potentials in cockroach legs, create pinhole cameras, design and create an optical illusion, as well as experience many different classic experiments in neuroscience that we will read about in the text. We will read many case studies and works by renowned Neuroscientist Oliver Sacks and create works of art which communicate what it is like to have a particular disorder or disability. We will create stop-motion videos to explain complicated processes. We will build models using everyday items from a typical maker lab to diagram a neuron, a molecular process or sensory system. We will also journal weekly and will keep personal dream journals for second semester. I would also like to incorporate a community outreach project for the year where students give back using an organization like ChicagoCares to help others and gain a new perspective of what other people’s lives are like. I have also reached out to several neuroscientists in the field and asked them to come and speak with my students about their research.
I am considering a culminating project the last few months of school where students raise mice, design mazes for them to navigate, control their diet and living environment, record daily activity levels and conduct experiments they design in groups. I have never done this before (I am terrified of mice!) but Mike Kosko did something like this in his classes a few years ago and I have wanted to try it ever since. This could create a nice basis for learning second semester topics and would give us a new lens to look through as we navigate through the course. Students could become real scientists in this scenario. For students to see themselves as a scientist and someone who could contribute to a field they previously thought was too confusing, challenging, full of complicated words- for them to see a place for them in that field would be a tremendous accomplishment.
Technology will play a valuable role in class this year. Luckily we have 15 class computers that students can use in pairs to investigate, record data, collaborate, research, and really dive into the curriculum in ways that I was previously not able to without this technology. They will also use them to create a record of their experiences in and outside of class by journaling, taking pictures and shooting videos together in groups. New technology such as the makey-makey kits will be utilized at the beginning of the year as a way to build positive group dynamics and strong teamwork skills. A certain appreciation and respect of everyone in the room for everyone else is extremely necessary for a productive and enjoyable learning environment. The first week of school I will be able to figure out individual and group strengths as I observe students solving problems using the makey-makey kits and other group challenges. Mostly, the technology will allow students to create digital products and share their ideas in an exciting and enduring way. Hopefully they will be invested and motivated by the fact that their knowledge will be shared with others in the class and beyond.
Backwards Design Plan
Results
Neuroscience attempts to explain how the brain takes in information through the sensory systems and integrates and encodes that information via molecular and cellular processes in neurons to allow humans to have sensation, consciousness and thoughts. It is essential that students understand the different levels of analysis: molecular, cellular, systems, behavior, and cognitive neuroscience. They need to have an appreciation for how those underlying processes build to create a seamless representation of ourselves and the world around us. It also tries to explain “normal” functioning in the brain in an effort to help people who suffer from a variety of brain disorders.
At the end of this course I want students to see the role of their brain in everything they think, see and don’t see, do or don’t do, feel, interact with, literally EVERYTHING. I also want them to see that these processes that we are largely unaware of shape the person they are and the way they see themselves and other people. I hope that as they gain a new perspective and understanding of themselves they will, in turn, learn to appreciate other people for everything they are. I hope that this biology that drives us and shapes us and the fact that it is common among all of us will lend a basis for understanding others- as the same and not different from us. I want them to gain a new understanding of society based on this new understanding of themselves as a biological organism with the same parts and processes as everyone else. The way we feel about other people is more about us than about them in terms of how they make us feel, if that makes sense. Something that seems as obvious as what we see as we walk down the street is actually a very individualized experience shaped by everything we have experienced before that in our lives. Stephanie Pruitt states, in her work Close Reading “Notice what is there and not. Notice patterns. Notice what you notice.” Making students notice what they notice as they go about their day gives them a basis of understanding themselves from a new perspective and can challenge them to try to notice new, perhaps more positive things as they navigate through their day. Encouraging them to think about their own thinking is something they may have never considered before taking Neuroscience.
One big idea that I would like for my students to uncover in first semester is how the brain communicates at the cellular level via electrical activity. My idea for the year is about perspective and how that changes the way we experience the world. The foundation of that idea, of course, comes down to how the brain communicates in the first place. This is integral to the study of neuroscience because all brain processes use this mechanism to carry out basic and complicated functions. The patterns of neuronal activity is how our brain makes sense of the world around us. What we choose to see in the world is driven by our brain activity and grounded in all of our prior life experiences. Those patterns of activity started to be laid out from the moment of cellular differentiation when pluripotent cells were “chosen” to become brain cells. How incredible! How can it be that this simple electrical surge creates everything we know- the perception of ourselves, the perception of others, coordinates our bodily functions, and drives our sensory systems? In order to bring this process to life I have to be able to make it tangible- the cellular level is too small for students to experience directly given the constraints of a high school classroom. This struggle of too small to see is something I hope to eradicate this year by making my class more dynamic and by bringing these big ideas to the surface by finding corollaries in another dimension.
Evidence and Performances
Evidence of emerging understanding will be gauged by having students write and post weekly journal entries online about what they are learning in class and about themselves and society at large based on their investigations in class. This record of their thoughts will allow the students and me to see the evolution of their thinking processes and what they are taking away from the class each week. Feedback will be given to the students via an ongoing GoogleDoc that is shared with me. Luckily I only teach one section of Neuroscience this year so weekly feedback is an attainable goal. I also like to periodically survey my students using Google Forms about the course and what they and I can improve on as the year progresses. This anonymous feedback is invaluable as it maintains trust, communication and shows how invested I am in their happiness and success in the class. As a class we review the results of these surveys and discuss them as a class so I can show them that I have read and digested their feedback and we make plans together to change the direction of a unit or the class as a whole if the surveys suggest that is needed. This flexibility and responsiveness to student needs has been very successful in years past.
More specifically, in my unit about membrane potential and action potentials for example, I plan to start with a relevant world of wonder and an investigation using a plasma ball. The world of wonder will center around patterns in nature: lightening, leaves, branches of a tree, neurons, veins in the body. We will also explore Lichtenberg figures which are essentially lightening in glass. I have looked into making these as a class if I can locate and borrow the necessary materials from the Physics department. These explain how photocopiers work!! For the plasma ball, how does it generate electricity? How does that electricity travel through the “empty space” inside the ball? What is electricity and voltage? These ideas will be explored using a variety of hands-on demonstrations including lighting up a fluorescent bulbs and spectrum tubes by holding it near the ball, using diffraction grating to identify noble gases present in the ball, hearing EMR when a person touches an audio cable and the ball, seeing electrical sparks by placing a penny on top as well as the interference of signals in a cellular phone when it’s near the plasma ball. All of these demonstrations will make students really think deeply and wonder about electricity (I hope!). Once we have a thorough understanding of electricity we can then relate all these ideas to the brain which also communicates via electrical signaling even though we are not plugged in to an energy source. Some of the performances students can use to demonstrate understanding will include a stop-motion video explaining membrane potentials and action potentials or using spiker boxes to explain how electricity flows through a cockroach leg and is able to move to music that is run through the leg. Students can create an instructional video with a song of their choice to explain what is happening at the cellular level to produce movement. Bringing the molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience components to life is an integral part of my new approach to the course. I want students to produce many tangible products in class that they can explain based on their newfound understanding.
Learning Experience and Instruction
I teach at Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago. Lane is a large, selective enrollment high school of over 4,200 students. The size of the school allows for us to have the largest variety of STEAM electives in the state. Students can experience specialized courses that most people do not have the opportunity to take until college. Three years ago I was fortunate enough to start a Neuroscience elective at Lane which is a Junior/Senior level advanced science elective. Neuroscience is an inherently interesting course that students are excited about taking. One of the main challenges of the course is all of the new vocabulary: neuronal structures, brain areas, parts of the sensory systems, molecular cascades, etc. There’s a seemingly endless amount of new words and classifications that students are faced with learning in each chapter. Putting all those compartmentalized ideas and new vocabulary together so they see how all those processes work together to create the world in and outside of our minds is just another layer of difficulty that students face.
Another major challenge for students was learning about the cellular mechanism of brain function- action potentials. It’s a very complicated topic that requires students to apply what they learned in physics to their own biology. Even though I approached this topic in a variety of ways, most students were completely lost in this unit. Another challenge is the intimidation factor of such a high level course. Students had trouble making sense of the readings by themselves to the point I’m not sure if most of them even read the book as we went along because it felt like they were reading a foreign language.
For this course, I have acquired 15 Chromebooks, 8 “makey-makey” kits, copper tape, batteries and LED’s from Donors Choose as well 15 spiker boxes which I have from the first year. My room has two sides to it- one side has stadium seating, a projector and whiteboard and the other has lab benches and chairs where students can pair up and work together.
As I've started planning out the year on a day by day and unit basis my ideas are blossoming and changing. My interest in teaching through art- poems, movies, painting, art design/installations, music videos, music itself, performance art by use of skits and video creation- has exploded. As I search for new ideas and techniques about how to teach a given concept I find that I am now drawn to art as a way to deliver the message, but also as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding in a creative way. I plan to employ a variety of instructional strategies to try and bring the course to life this year through the use of artistic expression. I plan to start everyday with a world of wonder for the first several weeks of school to challenge students to start thinking about the world around them in a new way. Perhaps I will have students present their own as the year progresses, we will see! I will also start each unit with an inquiry type investigation or piece of art as a way to spark curiosity for the rest of the unit. I also think that storytelling and role playing could be a fun way to learn about the history of neuroscience. Students could act as a particular famous neuroscientist or case study as a way to really get at the heart of that person’s contribution to the field. They can use the improv skills we learned at Second City to act as an expert of a particular condition where their responses to everyday questions must reflect deep understanding of that person's perspective based on their malady. Online and hands-on simulations are also a way to bring the course to life since most of what we discuss is happening at a level we cannot see or experience directly. I hope to find an oscilloscope simulation online for our unit about action potentials so students can discover what happens when ion concentrations change. We will also do several hands on labs: brain and eye dissections, mberry taste testing, spiker boxes to investigate action potentials in cockroach legs, create pinhole cameras, design and create an optical illusion, as well as experience many different classic experiments in neuroscience that we will read about in the text. We will read many case studies and works by renowned Neuroscientist Oliver Sacks and create works of art which communicate what it is like to have a particular disorder or disability. We will create stop-motion videos to explain complicated processes. We will build models using everyday items from a typical maker lab to diagram a neuron, a molecular process or sensory system. We will also journal weekly and will keep personal dream journals for second semester. I would also like to incorporate a community outreach project for the year where students give back using an organization like ChicagoCares to help others and gain a new perspective of what other people’s lives are like. I have also reached out to several neuroscientists in the field and asked them to come and speak with my students about their research.
I am considering a culminating project the last few months of school where students raise mice, design mazes for them to navigate, control their diet and living environment, record daily activity levels and conduct experiments they design in groups. I have never done this before (I am terrified of mice!) but Mike Kosko did something like this in his classes a few years ago and I have wanted to try it ever since. This could create a nice basis for learning second semester topics and would give us a new lens to look through as we navigate through the course. Students could become real scientists in this scenario. For students to see themselves as a scientist and someone who could contribute to a field they previously thought was too confusing, challenging, full of complicated words- for them to see a place for them in that field would be a tremendous accomplishment.
Technology will play a valuable role in class this year. Luckily we have 15 class computers that students can use in pairs to investigate, record data, collaborate, research, and really dive into the curriculum in ways that I was previously not able to without this technology. They will also use them to create a record of their experiences in and outside of class by journaling, taking pictures and shooting videos together in groups. New technology such as the makey-makey kits will be utilized at the beginning of the year as a way to build positive group dynamics and strong teamwork skills. A certain appreciation and respect of everyone in the room for everyone else is extremely necessary for a productive and enjoyable learning environment. The first week of school I will be able to figure out individual and group strengths as I observe students solving problems using the makey-makey kits and other group challenges. Mostly, the technology will allow students to create digital products and share their ideas in an exciting and enduring way. Hopefully they will be invested and motivated by the fact that their knowledge will be shared with others in the class and beyond.