Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 3, Intro to Neurobiology (5th-6th)
Dear SAVY Families,
Another day full of learning, fun, and “memories”! First in the morning was our students’ presentations! They did an amazing job. Each of the four teams prepared 4-7 slides to educate the whole class about a demyelinating disease (nerve cells losing their sheath and transmitting information much slower) – multiple sclerosis. The presentations were very thorough and thoughtful. We came to know the symptoms, causes, treatment, and research directions of the disease, as well as how this disease was first discovered, and what things were like when it remained unknown. There were some very moving moments when our students talked about how the medical world was confused and patients struggled before its discovery, as well as lots of new hope in the future thanks to scientists and doctors working together to bring more effective treatment to the patients. Apart from enhancing our students’ understanding of the role of myelin in neuronal communication, they also demonstrated promising presentation skills by taking turns to speak and even developing a skit to show the class how the disease was first discovered. The teams also took questions from the audience. There were some very insightful questions. Overall, the questions were handled well. Our students were honest – when they didn’t know the answer, they just told us they didn’t know. They were resourceful – they tried to make inferences from available information on their slides and used common sense to address some questions. They were also proactive – they said that they could look up information.
Then we moved to the computer lab for self-paced learning of brain structure. Each student watched the elaborate 3D animation of the brain and could pause, take notes, and review the videos whenever they wanted to. Afterward, we went back to the classroom to build brain models! Each of the four teams got a brain model to assemble. Our students demonstrated impressive collegiality. Some teams finished early, and they offered to help other tables to build the models.
After lunch, we had a surprise “quiz” about brain structure. It was not a real quiz – no grading at all. Students were given the key right after the “quiz” was done. The quiz was actually an introduction to our next learning segment – memory. The famous forgetting curve was introduced to our students, who just had a very real experience of forgetting, which happens to everybody if not enough effort is made to retain information.
Later, we discussed the definition of memory and the components of memory as a complicated system. The class was very active in a variety of memory activities that followed. We began by talking about sensory memory. Our students saw many numbers and a maze for a very brief period and listened to a foreign word. They would realize that such memory only lasts for a few seconds and is very fragile, like an echo among the mountains or a footprint on a beach. Then, we learned about a solution, which is a second component of the memory system, the rehearsal system. Using rehearsal (repetition), our students successfully remembered a few strings of numbers. But as the numbers got longer and longer, we discovered that it was not possible to keep up. This was when we introduced Miller’s Law, which is that most people can retain 7 things (plus or minus 2) in their immediate memory. We further explored the truth about this magic number 7–it was really the length of information, instead of the number of pieces of information, that mattered. Then we talked about more permanent memory – “records”. Our students shared the records in their minds with alacrity by answering questions like 4 x 5 = ? or what is the capital of Brussels? Last but not least, we began a comparison of short-term and long-term memory. For long-term memory, most of our students shared their first childhood memories, which helped them further understand this concept.
Be sure to ask your students about what they learned and how it might impact how they study or try to remember things in the future!