Beating Memorization Monotony

We all know that memorization can get quite boring within the classroom; which is why there is such a push for higher level thinking questioning and teachers pushing the kids outside their boundaries...but when teaching a course like Anatomy, some basic memorization is a necessary evil sometimes!

In class, we have covered body cavities, now we are moving on into body landmarks.  There are about 82 terms that they have been introduced to in the first 4 days of school so I wanted to take yesterday and today to do some activities to reinforce the terms they were learning. 

Yesterday we did a new activity with the kids that I developed on a whim this summer. I made cork boards for the kids (I made a class set of 20 with scrap wood at my house and $15 worth of cork from Hobby Lobby)

As you can see, they are just made from 3/4" plywood and the thin corkboard that comes in a roll.  I cut the wood and cork, sanded it to prevent splinters and glued them together with woodglue.  It worked really well. 

When I got to school I printed out smaller (each board is only like 6"x8") pictures of the face, anterior view of the body and posterior view of the body. 

So when the kids came in; their bell work instructed them to pick up a board, one of each picture, and a handful of thumbtacks and wait for further instruction. 

I modeled how I wanted them to use the boards by having them work in partners - one partner would mention the body landmark and the other would mark it on their board, or they could do it together - i kind of left it up to each group and what worked for them.  They had to go over all the landmarks/body cavities and use all the pictures.

Then I had them switch it up to battleship mode.  One partner would put in a bunch of thumbtacks and then give clues to their other partner trying to get their partner to get the same locations on their board. 

Finally we took it a step further and instead of the clues being solely "Place one at the mental landmark" they had to use directional terms.  So the clue turned into "Place one at the landmark that is directly inferior to the nasal landmark."  It made it that much more difficult and they really liked it. 

I could also see this working for many other things where the kids have to recognize the term/location/functions - I'm excited to see what all I use the corkboards for throughout the year.

Today we kept with the reinforcement theme and did my classic Veggie People Activity! 

The kids make a person out of veggies, get their picture taken, then make 'flags' with toothpicks/paper/tape and they label 20 body landmarks/body cavities.  I went over their labeling to make sure there weren't any mistakes and then I injured their veggie person.  By injure, I mean I tell them where they got hurt and they then have to develop a story of how they got hurt (you'd be surprised how creative they can get!), what organs/organ systems would be affected, what doctors would worry most about fixing and any long term effects on the veggie person.  The story is homework for over the weekend and i'm excited to see what they come up with.  Here are a couple of the kids veggie people - don't they look super cool!?!?!?

I love teaching A&P!