IMSA FUSION: Week 10 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?
  • Students engaged in heuristic debates on whether scientific testing or nurturing of the subject should have been the primary concern in the case of Genie and whether a scientist should ever become emotionally attached to his or her subject. In doing so, students were able to generalize their analysis of “Secret of the Wild Child” to concerns of scientific ethics.
• Describe any modification or differentiation made to the IMSA FUSION lesson.
  • After working through the January Problem of the Month, students finished watching the second half of “Secret of the Wild Child,” discussed and debated it, and then ventured to the computer lab to submit their answers to the Problem of the Month.
• What evidence do you have (qualitative or quantitative) that students understood the concepts presented?
  • In the debate, 17 of 19 students verbally weighed in on whether science or nurture should have been the primary concern of the researchers in the Genie case with 9 arguing for science and 8 advocating nurture. The crux of the debate came to a fairly broad agreement that the scientists should conduct experiments for both Genie’s learning and for wider scientific knowledge on language acquisition after extreme social isolation, but that those experiments should be curtailed if they become a detriment to Genie’s welfare.
• What other student learning took place?
  • Students learned that the Museum of Science and Industry is approximately 3 hours north of Champaign, which means they will not enjoy unlimited time in the museum on our field trip to Chicago on February 1st.
• Other Comments: Interstate 57, the road we will travel most on our field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry, parallels the old Illinois Central rail tracks through much of its route.

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~ by mrrosentel on January 11, 2012.