Heidi A. Everett
I interact with an inquisitive group of tenth grade students at an urban magnet high school for health sciences, business, and technology. The students continually challenge me to provide engaging lessons that will grip their attention and at the same time assist them in the learning the concepts that are required by the state and district standards. I teach biology and I am very rarely at a loss for being able to relate the lesson to a real world application. The seminar topic of "Art and Anatomy" developed by the seminar leader William B. Stewart provides a wide range of real world applications that help to diversify the instructional methods used to teach human biology.
The unit is designed for biology courses that include a human biology section in their curriculum. The unit covers only the major anatomical structures associated with the central nervous system along with a brief introduction to the peripheral nervous system. This combination is used in order to allow for an investigation of the brain's relationship with the five senses (hearing, touching, seeing, smelling, tasting). The peripheral nervous system is briefly covered due to the integral role it serves in conducting the sensory information acquired by the sense organs to the central nervous system. However, due to time restrictions and the complexity of the partnership between these two divisions of the nervous system, the anatomy covered is basic. The unit can be easily modified to include a more advanced investigation of the anatomy associated with the nervous systems.
I always endeavor to design lessons with the intent of putting Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory into practice. The use of the five senses in this unit allows for each lesson to have the multiple intelligences theory direct the activities. In particular, Gardner's multiple intelligences identified as verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, and tactile-kinesthetic intelligences are emphasized (Campbell, 2004). The variety of tasks that the students will need to complete in order to achieve the objective of each lesson will allow for the students to touch on these various intelligences. The current generations of students entering the classroom are conditioned to explore and learn concepts through multiple means due to their use of various electronic devices, video games, and their use of computers. The unit employs various multimedia sources as well as providing the students with multi sensory tasks this will help to cause the student to become proactive with the material presented.
