United StatesBrain Science Curriculum (Grades 3 & 4)
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These lesson plans, for third- and fourth-grade students, provide innovative learning experiences that will build students' understanding of how the brain works and how brain functioning relates to behavior. Utilize these lessons in your science class to help students recognize the connections between life and the classroom. |
Structure
Students will learn the three major parts of the human brain, the hemispheres of the brain, where the brain is located, and its size, color, texture and weight.
Students will learn that human and other animal brains have many similarities.
Students will learn about the human skull and how it protects the brain; however, the skull cannot do this job alone. Students will discern that there are many things that we can do to protect our brain.
Students will review the three major parts of the human brain and where each part is located.
There are many ways to "create" a model of the human brain. For this activity, students will be using balloons to represent the three main parts of the human brain. Students will also use this method to learn how the brain looks in the atypical cases of microencephaly and macroencephaly. Function
Use a lesson that is designed to help students understand that our brain allows us to function. The lesson centers on the five senses and how we use them individually and together, in response to different situations.
Use a lesson that explains that each of our senses is made up of different parts, called receptors. Each receptor plays a different role in receiving information from the environment. When the environment triggers a sense receptor, our brain receives and interprets the information, and our senses respond in a particular way.
Students will be introduced to several parts of the human eye and their functions. Students will create an eye model to see the location of some of the eye parts.
The rods and cones of your eye are located in the back of your eye, in the retina. The rods allow us to see movement, while the cones allow us to see color. We have many more rods than cones. In this activity, students will be shown that because our eyes have many more rods than cones, we are able to detect and see an object in motion before we are able to recognize its color.
Use a lesson that is designed to help students understand that several things can cause atypical vision. Through various activities, students will experience what it might be like to have various degrees of atypical vision. Genetics
Students will be introduced to inherited traits and learn that certain traits are passed on to us from our biological (birth) mother and father.
In this lesson, students will review inherited and observable traits, use this knowledge to poll their classmates, and create a frequency table from this gathered data.
Students will see that some of their characteristics may be inherited traits from their biological parents, while others may be the result of the environment.
In this lesson, students will put developing human brains and developing mice brains into order by age, by observing the three main parts of the brain.
Students will observe developmental changes in newborn mice and an atypical disorder in adult mice. Robotics
Students will compare and contrast a human and a robot. Five short activities will highlight the differences between the two.
Students will guide a robot through a maze. They will learn that both humans and robots behave via the operation of electrical circuits, and that atypical situations can occur in the circuitry of both humans and robots. |
Scientist Teacher Education Partnership Program (STEPP)
Brain Science Curriculum
Grades 3 and 4
Brain Science Curriculum
Grades 5 and 6
Scientists at the Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School in Waltham, Massachusetts, in collaboration with local elementary school educators and administrators have developed a neurobehavioral science education curriculum for use with children in grades 3-6. The Scientist Teacher Education Partnership Program (STEPP) began in 1998 through a grant funded by the Science Education Partnership Awards (SEPA) program of the Division of Clinical Research of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR/NIH).
The goal of the STEPP project is to enhance science literacy by providing elementary and middle school students with innovative learning experiences that will establish the foundation for broad, socially connected understanding of how the brain works and how brain functioning relates to behavior. In designing the curriculum we have taken advantage of the environment and resources of the Shriver Center, a center of interdisciplinary scientific research training, and clinical service.
Funding provided by NIH-NCRR, Grant # 1R25RR13433, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School and private donors.
© Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 2005.
