Upper School students in Bob Vierlinck’s Advanced Studies: Psychology class created models of the brain using atypical materials—candy, cake, fruit, cheese—and even made an interactive board game.
In a psychology class, teaching about the parts of the brain is fundamental. But, said Upper School teacher Bob Vierlinck, the way it is taught can be boring if you’re not careful. Vierlinck decided to take a different approach with his Advanced Studies: Psychology students. In groups of four to five, they were tasked with building brain models, but they had free rein over how they did it. He showed students a presentation that included examples from his own past classes and those of his colleagues, “to really hammer home the creativity and the uniqueness of this project.”
The results were remarkable. Students created brain models out of cake, candy, fruit and cheese, made digital graphics and physical drawings, and wrote brain-themed lyrics to a country song.
“My favorite part of the project was definitely making the physical ‘charcuterie brain’ of different cheeses, bread, jams and fruits,” said senior Sarah Gross. “We got to use different foods to represent the various parts of the brain, and it made the whole process more handson and memorable. I also learned how important it is to work well with others and communicate, especially when trying to bring a project to life creatively and clearly for your peers.”
Some models were interactive. “One group made a playable game,” Vierlinck said. “The best part about it was if you got a question wrong, the consequence was that you lost the ability controlled by that part of the brain. If you got the occipital lobe wrong, that meant that you had to close your eyes for the next round because you couldn't see. That’s really ingenious.”
In addition to creating the models themselves, each group made a presentation about a specific area of the brain. These areas included the limbic system, cortex, hindbrain, brainstem and miscellaneous brain structures. Their brief presentations—5-6 minutes long—covered the function and dysfunction of these different areas of the brain and were evaluated based on how informative, creative and understandable they were. Students were effectively teaching each other about the brain. Afterwards, Vierlinck linked it all together by describing ways the different regions interact with each other.
“Each group may be better with ‘their’ region of the brain than maybe the rest of it, but I think that's okay because it makes the class more dynamic,” Vierlinck said. “Last year we had a group that did a rap—they wrote it to Macklemore's ‘Thrift Shop.’ They just changed all the lyrics to being about the limbic system. It was awesome.”