Our Noggin volunteers returned to Discovery Middle School this Tuesday for more creative art and brains with science teacher Sam Barnhart’s 7th grade classes.
Alex Voigt, Erin McConnell, Justin Case, Gil Brady, Jacob Schoen, Jason Koch, Danae Brown, and Kayla Stippich from Portland State, and Rosie Salice and Essence Zundel from WSU-Vancouver shared their enthusiasm for neuroscience with some very interested 7th graders, from 9:00am until 3:30pm!
They discussed neurons, what different parts of their brain do, how brains grow, and what we can all do to take care of them.
Students were very curious about how they think, imagine, and function, and they asked insightful questions about concussions, how we form memories, and what happens to your brain while you’re sleeping (and dreaming).
We then broke into four groups, each relating to a lobe of the brain. At each table there was a cutout of a different lobe (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital), and students were asked to discuss what they learned about the functions associated with their lobes, and then draw visual representations of those functions. This gave students a chance to reflect on what they’d learned, and offered our Noggin volunteers a perfect opportunity to talk with students individually. Afterwards, the paper brains were re-assembled and displayed in the school hallway…
After this, students got the chance to come up and examine some real brains!
