Cópia de Understanding the teenage brain

Create model of brain and its parts and functioning.

Goals

Make connections between brain function and how teens are commonly said to behave.

Duration: 150 minutes

Keywords

brain, neuroscience, prefrontal cortex, strategies, risk, empathy, motivation, teen, teenage

Goals

Standards

MS-LS1-8

MS-LS1-2

Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways the parts of cells contribute to the function.

Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.

Standards

MS-LS1-3

Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

Questions Formulation

Do brains grow and shrink?

Now that we put things we know about the brain on paper, what questions does this raise for us about the brain?

Is it possible to live with half a brain?

Using the same technique as before where we write on sticky notes and share our responses through rounds of comparison, take five sticky notes and come up with five questions that you have about the brain and how it works. No question is too odd.

Share!

Is it possible to turn off pain?

We will come back to these questions throughout our study.

Questions

Essential Question

In this lesson, we will try to address your questions, but also we will explore the main question.

Are teenage brains different from adult brains?

Essential

Let’s take an unofficial poll

Why?

Yes or No?

As we go through the lesson, we will find out!

Central

Nervous System

Start With the Basics

Brain

Spinal Cord

How do we sense something?

We need a volunteer to come to the front!

We need to trace them.

The Basics

The central and peripheral nervous system consists of several parts, and we will draw them out:

Nerves to both arms and legs

Brain

Sensory Nerves

Spinal Column

Motor Nerves

Peripheral Nervous System

Sensory Nerve

They work together like this.

Motor Nerve

Crash Course

How Does It Work?

Watch this video from Crash Course.

As you watch, take notes on other parts of the central and peripheral nervous system that we’ve left out of our diagram so far.

How

How Does It Work?

Let’s take our diagram and get more specific based on what we watched.

There are two types of motor cells:

Somatic:

what is its function?

Autonomic (involuntary functions):

what is its function?

Sympathetic

Parasympathetic

Neural Tissue

Nervous tissue is made up of:

About 25% of the calories

Neural

Neurons - respond to stimuli and transmit signals

Glial cells - help provide support, nutrition, insulation, and signal transmission

that you take in every day are consumed by your brain's activity, largely consisting of neural tissue like neurons and glial cells.

Neurons

Neurons

Nucleus

Mitochondria

Dendrites - pick up messages from other cells and convey that information to the cell body

Axon - talk to other cells, so it transmits the electrical impulses away from the cell body (can be a meter long, e.g., traveling down the leg to the ankle)

Challenge: Know More

To go deeper with the concepts of how neurons communicate with one another, take a look at this video.

Challenge

Make Your Own Brain

Use the questions you asked at the beginning of the lesson to guide your research and find answers. Find the part of the brain associated with your question. Add the area to your clay brain and highlight it with a toothpick.

We have a basic understanding of the parts of the brain and their functions, but it’s time to go deeper. Make a clay model of the brain highlighting its six areas.

Find an area of the brain that you think is interesting and research it. Add the area or highlight in your clay model.

AND with a partner or your group, search for more information on the anatomy and physiology of the brain that you can add to your model to make it uniquely yours. Here are some options for highlighting parts of the brain:

Brain

More About the Brain

Watch these three videos to fill in gaps in your knowledge.

What might you add to your clay model?

More

With your group, create a list of ten new things you’ve learned about the brain and why these things are important.

Each member of your group should create one new question based on your watching. Put it on a sticky note and put it on the question board.

Make adjustments to your clay brain to reflect the new information you learned.

Different?

What do you think of the parenting advice?

What makes it special?

Is the Teenage Brain Different?

What are its challenges?

What stood out to you?

Take five minutes to look through your notes. In your groups, and then collectively as a class, we will discuss the following.

Now that you have read and watched a number of resources about the teenage brain,

What do you think? Is the teenage brain different? How?

Scientific

Scientific Reading Jigsaw

Reading is complex. Oddly, it gets easier in some respects as you get older. However, depending on the text, it can be difficult. College academic writing takes time to understand.

In the meantime, use reciprocal teaching strategies while reading text to put your collective minds on text. Your prefrontal cortex will make you happy and the nerve pathways will become myelinated to add speed and fluency to your reading!

Student groups assigned a section.

Gaining exposure to challenging texts and productively grappling with the language, is super good for your brain, however, and pretty soon, as you become more familiar with the language, it becomes easier.

Use reciprocal teaching to understand the text.

Note to Teachers

Answer the questions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099425/

Be ready to report out.

Use this resource for reciprocal teaching with your students: https://blog.tcea.org/reciprocal-teaching-rivet/

Unpacking Scientific Text

On a poster, identify:

What are 3-5 things you learned in your section?

What was your section?

How does this information connect to the previous readings? Make 3-5 connections.

Now, Let’s do a gallery walk, using sticky notes to make comments. Use notes from the previous readings and videos to make connections with the text.

This will be followed by a classroom discussion.

Unpacking