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>>PARK: Okay. I'm going to have you do an activity in a couple of seconds. You can do
it either with your neighbor sitting right next to you, or if there's an odd number of
people at your table maybe someone in front of you, because I would like you to do it
in pairs if possible just so you know that. If there is one extra person, then I guess
one group of three would be fine.
What I'm going to do now for the next half an hour is talk a little bit about some of
the ideas that I have used in my classroom teaching the biological basis of behavior,
which is, again, a foundation for so many things.
I mean, nothing psychological exist without a biological basis. Everything that we do,
really, is biological in nature, so I try to make sure that the students understand
that.
When you look at the biological domain or the bio-psych domain in the standards, the
document I was talking about earlier, these are some of the questions that are very important
that need to be answered that we focus our lessons on. So how do systems of the body
interact? How do they affect human behavior? How do chemicals in our brain and body affect
our behavior? How can a damaged brain repair itself? How our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
are products of how our brain functions? Of course, all of these relate to all the aspects
of psychology that we see on that standards domain diagram.
So when you look at how most people teach the subject - we were talking about this earlier
- a lot of people start with the scientific inquiry and they'd start with methods. They
move right into bio-psych, and then they do learning, then they do socio-cultural context.
Other people start with socio-cultural context and a scientific domain. I think it's very
important that you understand that there's no right way to do it.
You can start anywhere. But there are some things that I do think that if you explain
them to the students early on in the semester, it helps them understand everything else that's
taking place later. I do like to do bio-psych right after the research, social unit, for
that reason. I think it makes sense to do it early, early on in the beginning of the
course.
It affects every single thing that you see in this latter portion of the standards. They
need to understand bio-psych. They need to understand a lot of the terms and concepts
in neuroscience to help them understand what they're going to learn in the cognitive domain
and individual variations and even applications. That's one of the reasons I do it so early.
So when we look at this standard area, how many of you, when you first started teaching
psychology, really thought that this was going to be the part of the course that you were
not going to do well in?
It was like, "Oh, my god, I have to teach neuroscience." You read every book in the
market that you could find. I went to a four-week institute and the focus was on neuroscience
because I really thought it was going to be like ... and I ended up absolutely loving
this part of psychology. Maybe because I was trying to find ways that I could understand
it better, I believe that I tried really hard to find ways to help the kids understand it
better to make it more concrete because it could be very abstract and difficult to understand
it at times.
So with the performance standards in mind, I'm going to give you an activity that I believe
that works really well to help the students in the class. I'm just going to cut to the
chase and say that this is part of the lesson that I teach on neurotransmission, okay? When
you look at the content standards, which is structure and function of the nervous system,
that's a really big area that we can talk about. When you look at Performance Standard
1, I know you all do that, right? You break down the central peripheral nervous system
and all that kind of stuff. You all do 1.2 where they identify the parts of the neuron.
Eventually, they can describe the basic process of neural transmission. Now, how much they
have to do there is up to you, but there are some basic things we do want them to know.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I have a question for this part. I have a lot of trouble not
to teach them by memorizing. I don't know if you can just ... or suggest do nothing.
This is a part of psychology that I don't know how to [unclear].
>>PARK: Here we go. Okay, partner up. Take this paper. Everybody needs to have one of
these, so both people and the partner will get one, okay? He's going to pass them out.
You're going to look at the diagram, and you're going to do something that is very simple
but yet it can be very convoluted. So just partner up real quick. Mike's passing out
papers.
I'll give you the directions as soon as everyone gets it. Keep going.
Do you need more?
Okay, the first thing I want you to do is get absolutely silent. This is what I tell
my students. The first part of this is the think part. You know what the think-pair-share
is?
It's a very simple cooperative learning activity in the works, okay? Everybody look at the
diagram. Everybody notice there are no directions written on the diagram, so you have to listen
carefully.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: You just want to be partners.
>>PARK: You don't have to talk yet. You don't have to talk yet. Read the diagram. Start
with the first picture. I know you can't read the little tiny words and that's okay. Read
the diagram. Just read to yourself 1 through 6 going down. Look at the pictures.
Just look at the pictures and read them. This is called transacting with text if you're
a literature person.
If you can see the little words, that's okay. I'll be honest with you. You can give your
students this diagram without any of those little words.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS: There aren't any words. [Group cross-talking]
>>PARK: Good. I gave you the right one. Okay. Now that you don't have any little words,
this makes it even more fun.
Ready? Are you reading it?
Without knowing the words and you don't have to, I want you to write a description of what's
happening in each of those little pictures. You do not have to use scientific words; you
don't have to use scientific terms; you don't have to talk about the things that you teach
your kids. Just describe what's happening in the picture in any way you want. You can
call them bubbles. You can call them anything you want.
Describe each picture on your paper.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: By ourselves?
>>PARK: You should do it by yourself first, but if you want to do it together, be my guest.
I have them do it by themselves first.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Clean copies [unclear].
>>PARK: I have all clean copies for you absolutely.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Put it all in the box [unclear].
>>PARK: All of them. Describe one, two, three, four, five, six any way you want to try to
explain what's happening in the picture.
Let's make believe that I gave you enough time to do this. I usually give my students
at least five full minutes to do that part.
Ready?
Ready? It works best if you really do have them quietly do it first by themselves. Then
pair up and share what they wrote. And then tell them to combine what the two people came
up with so that they can have what they think is a good explanation that both of them agree
to. Then you ask a couple people to read out loud what they wrote.
Now, remember, if they don't know what the parts are called and they don't have the terms
written there, they may not know what to call them. They're going to come up with very unusual,
creative things. Some people described these as spaceships traveling across the galaxy.
Some people have described it as candies jumping across things. Some people just call them
bubbles or noodles or whatever, all right? But let's just look and see how you describe
the pictures. Ready?
Picture number one, volunteer?
Peter.
>>PETER: Two objects separated by a [unclear].
>>PARK: Okay, that's good. Anything else? Yes, Simon. Simone.
>>SIMONE: That's okay. That axons and dendrites show nonreactive [unclear] to the synapse
the way back to the [unclear].
>>PARK: Heavy duty. You know what you're talking about, but let's go on. One more.
Resting.
Okay, so three really good examples of things that can be written. Most of the times the
students will say nothing's happening [laughs].
Okay, number two, describe.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Stimulus.
>>PARK: This is stimulus, right? Everyone can see the stimulus. Why? What is it?
There's a little lightning bolt there so that tells me something happened. See, that's a
really good cue.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Action potential arises.
>>PARK: Okay. So maybe he knows what he's talking about. Maybe.
Okay, one more.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: [Unclear].
>>PARK: A what? There's a possible transmission taking place here. Let's just go to number
three. What would you say about number three?
Julie.
>>JULIE: Threshold is crossed and [unclear].
>>PARK: Okay. Anything else about number three that you wrote that might be a little different?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: If I'm a kid I would say some stuff is released.
>>PARK: Exactly. There's stuff coming out of that thing, okay? That's perfectly fine.
That's perfectly fine. If they've never done this before, they're describing what they
see. What about number four?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: [Unclear].
>>PARK: Okay. Anything else for number four?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Some of the little things are sticking.
>>PARK: Some of the little things are sticking somewhere else. They've crossed over, whatever.
Anything else for number four?
All right, how about for number five? What did you write for number five?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I have neuro signal sent, transmission occurred.
>>PARK: Okay. What else did you put for number five? What would the kid write?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I would think the 3D electric lightning bolt is now on the other
side.
>>PARK: Excellent. Excellent. That's perfectly excellent. All right, what about for number
six?
Tricky.
Re-uptake, whoa. Now, what might the kids say?
It's going back.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: It's going back.
>>PARK: Yeah, it's going backwards.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: If you ask me, [unclear].
>>PARK: Okay. Now, question?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I have a question. When you do this with your kids, your students,
I just wanted to get it around my head. This is before you got [unclear] read the chart?
>>PARK: Sure. You think of how you could use it. Before they read it, no words, have no
clue what they're looking at. They're just simply describing the visual, so they're retelling
the story just like in literature when you do a retelling or any diagram that you use
in history where they have to read the graphs. It's a retelling. Now, tell me this and do
it in a different way. Here's the picture; now, I've got the words.
Now, you can opt to go to the next step and explain to them that this is neurotransmission
and explain the process of neurotransmission to them very specifically if you like. You
can use other diagrams to do that. You can give them a reading, which, for example, the
second part to this is the actual diagram with the little words, but on the back is
a reading. Neurons communicate so now you can say, okay, now, that you've looked at
this a little bit, everybody takes this reading. Read the back of the paper, and then look
at your paper and compare what you wrote to what it says here on the reading. Then you
can finish up the activity by having them redo it with the correct terminology.
Now, you can teach neurotransmission in one class period this way and they'll get it,
I think. I mean, it works. I'll show you where I've got this from, okay? If you want to pass
this out while I show them, this is one of the many ways that you can teach about neurotransmission
and the process. How much they need to know, it's up to you. If you're teaching Intro to
Psych, AP Psych, do they need to understand the re-uptake? You'll talk about this again
when you do consciousness in drugs. You'll talk about this with neurotransmitters and
psychological disorders. This is something that they're going to refer to the rest of
the course.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: You think you could send us the copy of this result?
>>PARK: I can do better than that. Watch, okay?
There is this website, which you will get on the PowerPoint which I'll give you. This
is The Brain: Understanding Neurobiology Through the Study of Addiction. It is from the NIH.
Okay, this is an interactive website. This happens to be the first page of it. It's just
awesome. Okay, it's science-education.nih.gov. It's one of the links I put on the other paper
as well, so you'll have it in a couple places.
This is the whole book. They used to give you hard copies of this, so I have the hard
copy books at home. But you can download this whole thing yourself and print it out if you
want to. This tells you how to get started. This is the teacher's guide. This is the Web
portion of student activities. What's really cool in this teacher's guide is even though
it's focused on addiction, you can use a lot of these materials when you're just teaching
about neurobiology and teaching them these topics that we need to teach them. They have
how to use the website; they have lesson plans. Here's where I've got that document. Look
at all the lesson things that you can print out. It's amazing. So the thing I showed you
is very simple in this area right here, okay? Neurotransmission and there are others that
you can print out depending on how deep you want to go into it.
When you're teaching about caffeine and drugs and *** and stuff like that in the consciousness
chapter, you can use these materials and you can use this website. It's just fantastic.
It also has, by the way, the student activity section which is interactive online, so if
you're using computers or you want them to do things by themselves online, just click
on the activities that you think the brain controls and look what happens.
Okay, it opens up.
All right, if you click on all of the above, of course, you get immediate reinforcement.
Then there's click here to examine PET images. Here are PET images, so you click on A, B,
C, and D to find out which area of the brain is shown in each PET image. It shows you the
top, the lateral, all that kind of stuff. See?
So you can explain how PET scans work. What does this part of the brain do, move your
cursor over the brain to see which part of the brain is used for given activities? So
you have the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, the cerebellum. It's a
nice, little interactive when you're discussing structured function, doing your lessons in
the chapter, whatever it is, in your book; usually, it's chapter two. There's so much
more here. Anyway, I just wanted you to see that this is a great little website, great
tool to use when planning some of your lessons in this particular chapter, okay?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I'm sure there'd be a lot of people who heard you, but the kids
really like to have also the mouse party. So it shows the little neurotransmitter bobbing
around.
>>PARK: Yes. There are a couple other things that I've got through the mail through Dana
Brain Alliance, which I'm going to mention as well. Of course, Neuroscience for Kids
is a phenomenal website. There are so many resources available to teach bio-psych. There
really are, okay? How many of you participated in Brain Awareness Week?
Brain Awareness Week happens every single year. This year, it is in March as always,
it's the 11th through the 17th. Brain Awareness Week is something that's been going on for
a while. It's sponsored by Dana Brain Alliance. That is a website that you will love once
you get on it. It's very simple: dana.org. This happens to be the link to Brain Week
itself. You go to the main website and you can see over here there's all kind of resources
that you can utilize.
But during Brain Awareness Week, if you want to have your students participate in activities
where they can take what they learn in your class and share it with others. There's a
number of different ways that you can do that. One of the things that I do with my students
was I taught them about the brain and we learned all the stuff. We took all the tests. We did
all the typical assessments. Then I said, "Okay, now you're going to have to teach other
students about the brain, but your students are going to be the fourth graders at the
elementary school. So you're going to have to devise a way to teach children in the fourth
grade what you've learned about the brain."
Now, we all know when we teach it to others, that's the best way to learn it, okay? We're
going to go with the elementary schools so it's a trip, a day trip. You're going to divide
up into teams. There were like four elementary school classes so I divided my two classes
up into two teams. I mean, into teams for each of the groups. You're going to work on
puzzles and you're going to work on books. You're going to work on coloring books. You're
going to work on presentations. You're going to bring the real brain. This is the sheep's
brain that you dissect in the classroom. I don't know if any of you do dissection. This
is the sheep's brain that I get from the bio teacher every year and I bring it in the class.
We don't do dissection as a whole group, but I bring the brain in. I walk around with it
and I show it. They touch it because they want to touch it. You put the gloves on the
whole bit.
Then I cut it in half in front of them, and I show them the internal parts of it so they
can really, really see the inside of the brain, not just the pictures. They can see the whole
corpus callosum and stuff. They want to bring this to show the elementary school kids, which
as you can see, they love it, especially the little girl [laughs].
It's so cute. We bring the goggles. I heard some of you talking about goggles. We bring
the vision goggles over and do activities with them with the goggles.
Some of my students develop poster presentations, PowerPoint presentations. They have SMART
Boards in all the classrooms, so they do all kinds of cool things on the SMART Board.
But this is a big Velcro brain. After she and another student taught the little kids
about the brain, then the kids came up with the Velcro puzzle and put it together so that,
you know, "Okay, where's the temporal lobe going?" They came up with the temp lobe and
stuck it up there. So it's interactive, concrete; and it's at their level.
Then we also do a very important part, a brain safety lecture. Somebody's in charge of that
brain safety on the playground, riding your bike, when you're skateboarding, when you're
on the swings, how you can keep your little sister safe, that kind of stuff. So we really
come up with all these ideas about the brain and how to teach the little ones about the
brain at their level. It's a great service learning activity. It's a fantastic performance
assessment. And I can tell you they learn a lot more about the brain this way than just
giving them that multiple choice test at the end of the unit.
Sometimes we don't do this until the end of the school year or Brain Awareness Week in
March when we've talked about the brain back in October. So since then, what else have
we done? We've done the developmental chapter. They understand how fourth graders learn and
think because they've studied social and cognitive development. They can apply that knowledge
to this activity as well. We've studied learning, so they can apply what they've learned about
how people learn mnemonic devices and things like that and develop things for the kids
that apply using the concepts from that chapter. It's a great end-of-the-year assessment, and
it's fun. But the perfect time is Brain Awareness Week.
So you can get all kinds of resources from all different places: Neuroscience for Kids,
the National Institute of Environmental Health has kids' pages specifically for children.
There are logos you can download if you want to make bookmarks, if you want to make fun
things for them. From the Neuroscience for Kids' website, Eric has like all these coloring
book pages, so you can make your own coloring book of the brain and bring it over for the
kids to work with. They'll sit and color and play the games with the high school students.
I mean, everybody has to actively be involved. That's Eric's website, Neuroscience for Kids.
We got things from the Dana Brain Alliance that they could take home to their parents,
free booklets on the brain. They have a whole series of things on memory loss and Alzheimer's
disease and things that parents might be interested in. Staying sharp as you age, which relates
to the aging in the developmental chapter.
Also, just some other suggestions, have them write stories. Have them write plays. If you're
familiar with the critical thinking workbook by Diane ... is it Halpern?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Yeah.
>>PARK: Diane Halpern. It's a critical thinking workbook that is available through Worth Publishing.
It has five or six critical thinking activities for every single chapter that you teach. In
the neuroscience section, there is a critical thinking activity where you have to write
a story, a fiction story. You have to develop a new superhero. That superhero has to have
powers that, as a result of their brain being augmented in some way, shape or form - you
can be as creative as you like - that superhero now has his power. So in the story that they're
writing, they have to make sure they get the brain part right and the powers right, but
everything else is up to them.
Naturally, the teacher always is the villain in the story. There are three students that
are superheroes that saved the world from some disaster. Some kids write plays. This
is a great packet. The teacher that now teaches at my high school after I retired put this
on the Internet. So I just downloaded it off this website. This is the packet he gives
his students to help them develop their superhero stories. It's very detailed. It has a rubric
and everything. Yes?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Did you say [unclear] or it's Halpern?
>>PARK: I think it's Diane Halpern. Halpern? How do you spell it? H-A-L-P-E-R-N. Halpern.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: D-I-A-N-E H-A-L
>>PARK: P.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: P-R-I-N.
>>PARK: Right. Halpern.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: It could be P-E-R-N.
>>PARK: I'll look it up for you. I'm pretty sure it's Diane's book. It's not Jane Halonen's
book, is it?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Yes.
>>PARK: It's Jane Halonen. Excuse me. Diane and Jane are both awesome people. I just saw
Diane at the AP reading, so that's why I kept thinking it's Diane. It's Jane Halonen.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: How do you spell it?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: H-A-L-O-N-E-N
>>PARK: I'm so sorry. I knew I kept saying it and it was wrong.
Fantastic book, okay?
Anyway, I brought with me some things that you can look at later if you like that helped
my students to understand the structure and functions of the brain. Also, they used some
of these things with the kids besides this activity that I just gave you, which you can
certainly use with your kids. Here are some of the books that they developed:
Your Brain as Told by Pinky and the Brain. It's a whole story about the brain. I told
them that they had to include like 11 or 12 brain structures. It had to have pictures.
It had to have a storyline. It had to have explanations. It had to be correct. After
they developed the whole book and they printed it out and they shared it with our class,
these are some of the things they brought to the fourth graders which some of the kids
sat around and read them to each other and talked about them and learned from them.
This one was a big hit: Sports and Your Brain. There are all different sports in here. What
Andy did was he'll talk about the cerebellum and how important it is for the gymnast and
why. The motor cortex, he related it to running and the runner who's jumping over hurdles
and so on and so forth. So he covered all different sports in the different parts of
the brain and how they work. This happened one year when the Phillies were winning the
pendant and everything. We had a whole sports book just about the Phillies and baseball.
The kids loved it because it's like, hah, they're all Phillies fans where I taught in
West Deptford. This is ... was it Melson [phonetic]? Melson's Journey to Find the Brain. I mean,
Dara [phonetic], the Adventurer. What's that? It's called Dora, yeah, Dora the Explorer.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Dara.
>>PARK: Dara, whatever. It's fun. It's really fun. One of my students loves Grey's Anatomy
so she did a whole book. Now, this wasn't suitable for the fourth graders, but she did
a whole book on Grey's Anatomy and downloaded pictures from the Internet of all the doctors
and nurses in different scenes from the television show, and in detail explained what they were
doing and how the parts of their brain were helping them with surgery and stuff. It was
fantastic. It was so much fun, but it wasn't for the fourth graders.
I mean, you can really think of creative ways, right? For them to show you what they've learned.
That's performance assessment, alternative assessment. Question, suggestion.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I'm just wondering if you have whatever you think they can ...
>>PARK: The write-up?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Yeah, how you explain it to them. There's a big part of ...
>>PARK: The directions as well as you can have a rubric to grade it to make it a lot
easier, right? Basically, again, looking at the standards, I'm trying to figure out what
do my students know. If I look at Performance Standard 1.3, here are two suggestions for
the way in which my assessments fit in for the performance indicators.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I'll check it some way [unclear] as a summative assessment. The
kids have to write a story about [unclear] and what happens from the time they see the
bee to the time that they [unclear].
>>PARK: Excellent. Any other ideas you want to share with the group about what you do?
And I do all the other stuff, too. I have a PowerPoint for the chapter and I have discussions
and readings and all that other stuff, but I want to see what they've learned and I want
to see it in different ways. By the way, you've heard of multiple intelligences and learning
styles and all that kind of stuff. This really addresses, I don't know about your school,
but the whole concept of differentiated instruction. There are so many things that we have to worry
about as teachers in the classroom. We have to be creative, and also be true to the objectives
of our lessons. Because remember, some activities, if they're just fluff, they're useless. You
don't do activities for the fun of it, not all the time.
Question or someone had their hand up? Yes.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: What helps with differentiated instruction, one of the lessons that I always
do that I borrowed from a book [unclear] and tracing the kids so that I'm having [unclear].
I can tell you how much it [unclear].
>>PARK: This simple neural chain activity where everybody lines up in the room and you
get out the timer. They have to stand behind each other. They have to touch each other's
shoulder and you time them. Then the next time, you make it more difficult. It's like
if you're touched on the right, you have to touch on the left and it slows down. Then
you talk about the whole idea of neural transmissions and pathways. They're not like one on one.
They're not that simple. Depending on your class, you can really get goofy like touch
the back of the knee. You got to be careful where they touch. Depending on your class.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I just talked to my wife [unclear] dietician and I am in the science
department. It's pretty like [unclear] a box. Basically, like the 12 box or something. Each
box is a different way to try to show what you've learned about the brains. One of them
is like the superhero; another one is like create analogies, picture analogies or like
this part of brain is like [unclear] information. The only difficult thing here is you have
to figure out if the rubric that would work for all where people [unclear] the same, but
I can involve in that happening. I use that. That seemed to work pretty well because a
lot of kids, they like the idea that they're choosing.
>>PARK: The choice is really, really important, I think. If they want to make a puzzle, they
can make a little puzzle like this. This is puzzle number three. There were five puzzles.
What they do is they took real puzzles. They turned them backwards. They develop their
own brain culled [sounds like] puzzles so when you put these all together, it's the
limbic system of the brain. It's just the back of a regular little tiny puzzle. If you
want to get really creative, some of them went and bought the spongy stuff and made
this big, gigantic brain puzzle. They put them together on the floor. One of the funnest
- you know how the kids say that - one of the funnest things that they came up with
was brain ... what do you call it?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Twister.
>>PARK: Twister. Oh, my God. They took a sheet, this whole, big, giant queen-sized sheet,
and they made a twister board on it with all these different parts of the brain and questions
to go with it. Then the kids worked in teams to play brain twister, and you had to move.
It was fun. You just move all the desks out of the way and you have a blast.
>>SULLIVAN: Hello again. Just a few more minutes and then we'll take a little break. Then Randy
Smith will be giving keynote on methodology at 4:00. I'm going to talk a little bit more
about some ideas I have for the biological domain, bio-psych domain. By all means, share
your variations and ideas. Please remember about 8:00 tonight, again, you can skip it
and go right to the eating and drinking, if you want. But if you want to come at 8:00,
Deb and I haven't really talked about this but either in the lobby of this building or
in a lobby where you checked in in the dorm, we can sit around in a circle and you can
share ideas. We'll have other stuff if need be. You can come for five minutes, or you
can come in for four hours or anything in between.
One other thing is this morning, and I think we had this problem again, it seems like some
people aren't getting all the handouts. We've got to do something to fix that where you
will start a little list where you can write which ones you wanted to get but didn't get
and so on. I thought we might've even just run out then. I thought there were enough,
but if there are things you haven't gotten and you want, you may not want them. If you
want them, we'll find a way to get them for you.
I have another set of things to give out to you today. We're, again, short on time so
I'll just mention: one is in the consciousness area in this domain, and there are so many
great things about that. Amy Wolfson's going to talk about sleep and adolescence, which
I know I'm looking forward to a lot.
I think you probably agree that hypnosis is a great area for critical thinking, for genuine
critical thinking, gathering evidence deciding on a belief or an action. I have one little
write-up that I just made up of an alleged hypnosis show and with a little survey at
the bottom that asked the kid how convincing is this evidence that hypnosis is really an
altered state consciousness, what other evidence would you need, and so on. So it's just a
little critical thinking activity, but it's pretty self-explanatory. I'll give that out
later, if you want.
Another thing I do in consciousness and then I'll circle back at something we may do together
for a few minutes is something some of you may have been exposed to skillful teacher's
stuff, The Skillful Teacher Program. It's a variation of something. We just call it
"Facts on Your Back." It's a very big write-up, but you can completely rip this off. I wrote
up the facts; here's what it is. Because consciousness also is especially like in an AP or IB class
obviously gets short shrift, I think so interesting, but I think you can get a lot of stuff in
consciousness just from a half an hour doing something like this. I wanted to actually
do it for fun although you know too much, I think. The kids don't know anything about
it, so it's much more valuable that way. It would take a half an hour, so give yourself
a half an hour if you have 30 kids, so I imagine you might take 25 or 30 like I would.
Again, I have a write-up here, but maybe you've done versions of this before. Then you just
blow up these questions. I made them up, but they are pretty heavily researched. Some of
them are little skinny ones and some are bigger. First one is simple: what is the length of
an American college student's typical night sleep? So if we were doing it, I would give
one of these to each of you face down in a piece of tape. This is the hard part where
all teachers write here and they're like, "Okay, you have to tape this to your back
now," and that's a nightmare.
But anyway, they make a little tape thing, have a person help them do it too. Everyone
has one of these on their back. They do not know what the question is.
They then have a little score sheet. I put it in the write-up. You then basically drift
around as if you're at a party. I usually do seven just because the timing works that
way. With 25 people walking around, have seven people read your question. You don't know
what it is and record their answer to it. Someone, okay, has this on her back and she
turns around. It's just fun too. I like it. It's just silly. "What is the link to the
American..." and the kid says, "I'm going to say five-and-a-half." You still don't know
the question; you write it down. After you get seven, you can do little calculations
at the bottom. You still don't know your question. At the bottom, I'll say, "If your answers
were numbers, figure out the mean, the median, and the mode. If they weren't, just get a
modal answer. If it was a yes-no question, what was more typical answer, yes or no?"
At this point, just the mystery of not knowing your question kind of keeps them engaged.
Then usually, you can do it ... maybe there are many ways to do it. There are at least
two ways to do it that I can think of. One is you can just randomly assign them and I'll
write it on the board or have it on a PowerPoint. "Okay, people with question number 1, 7, 9,
and 13, you're going to meet over here." More typically, I'll do it some of these are about
sleep, some are about dream theories, some of them are conceptually about consciousness;
some are about hypnosis and other altered state of consciousness. You just group them.
After there, you've pretty much got a sense that they all have done their little tabulations.
Say, "Okay, if you're question number 7, 9, 14, or 28, you're going to sit over here together.
You four are going to sit there and there. Now, you can discuss your responses. You got
your question. You could look at your question and talk about what surprised you." Then they
report out and they report out and they report out. Certainly, in an hour long class, you
can get a lot of stuff about consciousness to the point that you could almost get away
with doing it that day and then move on.
It's usually pretty fun. I have a write-up also of the answer sheet basically with the
data on it that would say I want to find one. Let's do this.
Yeah, I'm going to ask this. This is a long one. In a 2002 study of over 1,200 students
from three Canadian colleges, researchers found identical results to a 1950s Canadian
study regarding the top four most common recurring dream themes. These also largely matched up
with American surveys. Name any two of those four.
Because you know psych, you know there's a lot of chase, flying, falling, naked in a
public place, things like that. It's fun when kids try to answer that question. But then
when they get into their groups, you then distribute usually just a different colored
paper because there are so many pieces of paper flying around at this point that actually
has the answers to these and say these were the findings. They talk among themselves about
it. Of course, from that, we probably or many of you will ask that question. There are common
recurring dream themes. What do you make of that? Does that tell us something maybe about
what purpose dreams are serving or maybe not?
This allows us to do that and then you can get at dream theories from it pretty easily.
It's again a pretty big write-up. If you don't want it, I understand, but I'll give those
out to you shortly and the hypnosis one.
Then Deb mentioned many great websites. One of them, I don't know. Can you just nod your
head if you ... I like that sometimes you say to kids, "Okay, nod your head," and they
raise their hand. Nod your head if you've seen Neuroscience for Kids online, Eric Chudler,
and there's a guy named Patrick Gunkel at MIT who does a lot of stuff. Neuroscience
for Kids just has great stuff. But one of the things that I have found valuable in this
unit, usually at the end - not as an intro - is brain metaphors, which is one of his
ideas. I have a write-up where I just suggest how you might do that. Again, you can do it
in dyads or triads or individually, or you can do it as a discussion. That might expedite
things and simply ask kids. For one, you can lead them by saying the brain is like an army.
How so? Or the brain is like a dishwasher. I don't know. It was a terrible example that
I just used there.
Then after that, if you just model a couple like that, you can ask them to come up with
their own. I wrote some examples of some that kids at my school have come up with. Chudler
and Gunkel have examples too. I think, again, it could be seen as something kind of a lightweight,
but it isn't, I think, because it requires conceptual understanding.
Like Deb's activity to begin the unit, you do on anything about neural transmission.
Just decode these pictures, wonderful way to start. The brain metaphors sometimes can
even be just an alternative assessment or an extra credit assessment. Difficult to evaluate,
I grant you, but they really do demonstrate conceptual big picture understanding.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: They'll do the brain raps, the music. Kids write their own songs
and perform them. It's hysterical.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: They do a drug.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: They do a drug. [Group cross-talking]
>>SULLIVAN: Stephanie, I think, asked earlier about how do you get them to remember this
stuff, because even if you're not taking an international baccalaureate or an AP course,
where you know in the end the AP, there's going to be a hundred multiple choice and
you'd better know the amygdala.
But I also think, again, this could be done badly, I think, creating mnemonic devices
and having the kids do it. So the write-up I just gave you is about that and I'd like
to just do a minute on it, if you don't mind.
Again, don't read it right now. I emphasized early on, creating mnemonic devices is not
a substitute for knowing.
A lot of time, if you don't do it well, I think it becomes like a game. But if the kids
are creating their mnemonics, you have to understand. So it's told you that you, that
they understand. In fact, if their mnemonic isn't very helpful, it's usually because they
don't get it yet, and that tells you they don't get it so it's a kind of a formative
assessment to you, too, while you're doing an activity like this.
I have found it, especially because I teach Advanced Placement Psych so you have this
big test near the end, they're very valuable. I've come up with a few myself. Some of them
you know about because they're standard. FPOT for the four lobes of the brain and the 4Fs
for basic functions of the limbic system. That's a little dicey. It's good for you to
remember anyway when you stay away from it in your class, perhaps, but there's a lot
of others in the write-up. I've given you a lot that I've come up or our classes.
What I'd like you to do just for a moment because we're very low in time is to look
on the third page of that.
We'll just try one quickly. You can talk to people. For instance, bunch of neurotransmitters.
Gamma amino butyric acid is one, GABA. Deleting, I think, leading inhibitory neurotransmitter
of the brain. It's conceptually difficult to understand. I love the metaphor; that's
certainly not my metaphor. Excitatories like stepping on the gas. Inhibitories like stepping
on the brakes. On switchers is an off switch, and so on. We have inhibitory mechanisms if
you don't - problems. GABA, leading inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain. We came up
with a mnemonic, get-a-brake adjustment, that if you don't have enough GABA you need a brake
adjustment because the brakes in your system basically aren't working.
I think this is so powerful doing mnemonic devices and self-generating them. Be very
active in doing that as elaborative rehearsal and makes them more likely to retain it even
if it's a stupid one. Then they always say I have a stupid one I want to make. Stupid
is good.
Sometimes I want to say when you were like I know it's kind of stupid, I don't really
have that. But you know they will not forget it because they generated it even if it doesn't
work.
I think it's to say, if I could tell a quick story, as you people came yesterday, like
everyone, people tried to learn names. I tried to learn my kids' names for the first day
of school. I use some name mnemonics. I'm not that good at it, but I do it some. But
even if that's easier to do if you have the list beforehand, like we add the 25 people,
Caitlin mentioned before. You say, "Hi, I'm Emily." You're like [unclear] because you
actually saw the list before. If you didn't, then you're just starting from scratch. But
then, when I did meet you, I said, "Oh Emily. And I already had that part in my head. Actually,
my mnemonic is stupid is to picture you had glasses on, to like picture two big M&M's,
like one M&M in one glass and one in the other. You think, no, it's not going to work. It
works.
Later, when you see her ... and that wouldn't help too much. It wouldn't help any of you
because you're like her name is not M&M. But it does cue what you already have in there
somewhere. That's where the bio-psych in sensation and perception, I think, most importantly.
Maybe it's because I originally came at psych a very long time ago from more of a liberal
arts perspective. So many of you were history teachers, English teachers, geography, and
I started that way, although for 20 odd years I've been teaching just psych. But because
of that in bio-psych and sensation perception worried me more, creating mnemonic devices,
I think, is powerful. So can you just take a moment just to play around with it? On the
third page, it says, "Create a mnemonic of the biological basis of behavior." Just talk
to someone, either behind or in front of you or next to you and try to come up with a mnemonic
using either the way the words sound or the way the words look, some part of it.
The third page in ... actually, the second page, the third side, yes.
For the sympathetic versus parasympathetic system. Some of you may already have one,
a way that if a kid saw it and they knew sympathetic and parasympathetic, but they always confuse
the two, what would keep them straight? Take a moment and do that.
I hate to hurry you, but is anyone really proud of their mnemonic to keep those straight?
Anyone like to share? Please, Beth.
>>BETH: You know like they keep them straight, right? So stress and peace for sympathetic
and parasympathetic.
>>SULLIVAN: Very good.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: We even said this year, if you're in paradise, you do a lot
[unclear].
>>SULLIVAN: Very good. Paradise - parasympathetic. Parachute is a common one, that the parasympathetic
system brings you back down safely but you have to deactivate. That's a little problematic
because some things in your sympathetic are inhibited digestion, salivation, so and so.
It could be a bad cue later on, but I find it usually isn't. Yes?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I just want to give you an example like of an accident, and I'll
say rather than sympathy for someone that's in the accident and finds himself in a fight
or flight response. Then we say when you are in an accident, the paramedics come. The first
thing the paramedics will say to you is like calm down. You'll be all right. Parasympathetic.
>>SULLIVAN: If one of your kids, 16, 17, 18 years old, volunteered that, you'll be like
he gets that. He definitely gets it or he couldn't come up with that and not by itself
is done. Emily.
>>EMILY: As to fight or flight for sympathetic, and then rest and digest for parasympathetic.
>>SULLIVAN: Rest and digest is one that ... everyone knows fight or flight, but not rest and digest.
From the brain structures, hippocampus is easy. You pick your hippo wandering on a campus.
I would do this. Kids always laugh and like, "Yeah, you're not going to forget it though."
They're wandering in the campus with little backpacks on. They're confused; they can't
find their class because they have such a bad memory. The kids would be like, "That's
stupid, Mr. Sullivan." I'm like, "Yeah, maybe, but we'll see."
The amygdala, I think, has my God right in the middle of it. My God I'm angry, or my
God I'm afraid.
How about hypothalamus?
It has lot of functions. One of them is appetite.
Some people, kids have occasionally said, "I hear that if you smoke pot, you'd become
more hungry." I'm like, "That's one. Let's move past that. You might think pot belly
maybe, something like that."
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: My kids said they have chapters in the book. Food, sex, drugs,
those things that hypothalamus controls, so they think it's a favorite pocketbook.
>>SULLIVAN: And then there are lots of alphabetical ones that you'll probably use. Sensory neurons
are often called afferent or efferent neurons, and motor neurons, efferent or afferent. A
for approach, E for exit, so many sort of things like that that you can use. In the
bio-psych and sensation and perception chapters, I think having the kids develop their own
mnemonics late in the unit perhaps or as they go in the unit can be very valuable. I wrote
up a bunch that we use, but maybe in our sharing session today, you can share some of them
too.
I'm already noticing it's 3:40 so that's bad.
If you have anything like this, you want to share, a mnemonic that you think is great
for right now?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I've just got [unclear] on neurotransmission is a dimmer switch. It
seems to work.
>>SULLIVAN: Very good. Do they know what a dimmer switch is?
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Yeah.
>>SULLIVAN: Do you still teach, I rarely do now, when you talk about the hue brightness
and saturation and vision and then frequency and loudness. When I was a kid, there was
actually a loudness thing on the stereo. So I go and play with the loudness thing and
you'll know what the difference is between loudness and just volume, but they don't have
those anymore. So I've never come up with another one, so now I just don't say anything.
Julie?
>>JULIE: Yes, they'll have a hard time understanding that neurons fire at the same ... now I'm
going to get all confused, but the difference between a bright light and a light, but then
[unclear] a very difficult time understanding what the neurotransition looks like. What's
the difference between the bright light and [unclear].
>>SULLIVAN: I also think that gets it. What I thought for a while, Marianne was getting
at today when we were kind of bogged down in what we were talking. I thought she was
going metaphysical and philosophical because of that explanatory gap there is. Occasionally,
you'll have a kid say, "So I get this molecule floating across the synapse and locking into
receptor sites and we're just firing [unclear] and all of that. How does that still translate
into seeing this thing or experiencing this thing?" The answer is who knows? Maybe we'll
know when we die. But it is still a big explanatory gap there. I'm sorry.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Like a neuron fires at the same rate, but it fires more often
that ...
>>SULLIVAN: Or more of them fire.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: More of them fire? You can [unclear].
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: No, no, no.
>>SULLIVAN: Clearly not. Clearly not. No.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: I think it's like a stronger action potentially.
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: Well, yeah. Maybe that's ...
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: A neuron had that as an extra stronger action [unclear].
>>WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT: It's all or none.
>>SULLIVAN: Yeah, it's the all-or-none. That's where the toilet thing is great. Probably
some of you have seen that old trick before too. A quick field trip to the toilet is great
for that. It's an old metaphor, but I think it works. The all-or-none law especially.
I think we have to wrap up. I have some other handouts. I'll just put them on your desk.
I think Nancy may want to say something, but the keynote is at 4:00 so we have a little
break.