Summer Career Connections Session 4, Day 2, Neuroscience 101
Day 2: Dear “Neuroscience 101” parents,
Day 2 brought another sunny day of fun and learning! We started the morning with a fun icebreaker (a “fill in the story”) and reviewed our classroom norms and expectations to make it as productive a day to come as possible. I then introduced the final project guidelines and expectations to your students. As a reminder, you can find all this same information in the syllabus. Before we planned to dive into the project, we presented our “growth mindset” projects from yesterday – I was so proud of how they came together and especially proud of how positively and respectfully your students engaged in the task of giving their classmates specific positive feedback on their project. After our presentations were completed, we discussed a journal prompt that I wanted your students to work on to spark brainstorming for their final project. We headed outside, and students began individually or in groups of their choosing began selecting their final project topics. One of the most incredible parts of SAVY is being able to provide students with individualized mentorship and feedback, which I did today through one-on-one meetings with students/groups of students about their project topics. Specifically, I asked them to tell me why this topic is interesting and motivating to them (does the interest come from personal experience? Observations of the world? Media?), what open-ended format they might plan on using for their project, and what sorts of articles they might try searching for. We have a wonderful array of topics across all five neuroscience career areas we are exploring in this course – I can’t wait to share more about the projects soon!
After lunch, we dove into our first two specific career areas: “Research” and “Tech & the Brain.” We explored the tools and technologies used to conduct explorations of the brain, both past and present. Many wonderful and insightful questions were asked by your students during these group discussions. We then learned about the impact of video games on the brain (there are both positive and negative effects!), as well as what’s involved in designing a prosthetic that can feel things like a typical arm could.
We wrapped up the day by doing a “jigsaw” – students selected two articles from a set of four that I gave them (all tech related), got into groups, and read and talked through the articles. Once they discussed group roles/expertise for the article, they were challenged to tell a different group about that article. In this way, students only read 2 articles but learned about 4. Most of all, this activity challenges them to get better at summaries, reflection, and communication.
Tomorrow, we will be diving into the arts and law and ethics! I can’t wait to share all the wonderful learning to come.
Sincerely,
Nicolette