The Anatomy of a Neuron
Last Friday, Emmarose and Paiges' groups had the opportunity to visit with guest speaker and parent, John Tompkins, who is a neuroscientist at UCLA. First, students were able to see how knowledge of the body systems can lead to a career outside of healthcare professions. Furthermore, students engaged in collaboration by sharing their own understanding of body systems and how they work together.
During John's guided observations about the different parts of the brain, E.C. predicted that the cerebellum is near the spine because it helps control movement.
Finally, students had the chance to become a part of the body's nervous system! John taught about the anatomy of a neuron and let students role-play how neurons communicate with ropes, jumping jacks, and party poppers. All in all, this was a fun and engaging way to understand how even the parts of the body utilize the systems thinking toolkit.
Emmarose's Group: A Week at a Glance
Communication Literacy
Story Pirate stories
Parts of a story - Introduce character and setting, introduce problem, three events, climax, solve problem
Adding details - how, why, when?
Pen Pal Letters to students in Sierra Leone
Banangram sight word build
Book groups
Fluency, intonation, vocabulary, vowel partners and digraphs
Making predictions, character exploration
Patterns and Modeling
Play Strike It Out and share strategies
Place Value
Base ten block build
Expanding numbers
Number Lines
Scavenger hunt (odd/even numbers, patterns)
Skip counting on the number line
Addition and subtraction on the number line
Perimeter and area of shapes
Exploring rectangles, squares, and irregular quadrilaterals
Theme
Signature Dishes
ingredients, look, name, menu section, price
Begin blueprints of restaurants
Observe some bird's eye view images
Draw perimeter of restaurant on graph paper
What does every restaurant need?
kitchen, tables and chairs, bathroom
