IMSA FUSION: Week 9 Reflection

• Unit: Your Sense-Sational Senses – Pathways to Learning
• Lesson: The Brain: What’s Going On In There?
• What do you perceive to be the strength of each lesson presented?
• Rather than working kinesthetically, virtually every student participated in a deep discussion of the brain, types of memory, and language acquisition.
• Describe any modification or differentiation made to the IMSA FUSION lesson:
• We began with a discussion of language acquisition and the brain, read and discussed the story on Phineas Gage using the popcorn game of reading, examined various regions of the brain and their function, reviewed the feral French child who we discussed months ago, and then watched the first half of the video on Genie, “Secret of the Wild Child.”
• What evidence do you have (qualitative or quantitative) that students understood the concepts presented?
• Every student read and correctly answered the questions on Phineas Gage. Over 90% of students participated in the discussions of the brain, Gage, and Genie, the severely isolated child from California who was studied and nurtured by UCLA scientists in the 1970s. Through their comments, students indicated that they understand how brain functions are localized. They also tested their own hypotheses of whether Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis stands in the case of Genie.
• What other student learning took place?
• Students learned to pay close attention to reading and stay on alert by playing the popcorn game.
• Other comments: Today, no one knows what happened to Genie or even whether she is alive now. You can read more about her here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4804490&page=1#.Tuko1bJFudB

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~ by mrrosentel on December 14, 2011.