Teaching
Anatomy of a Lesson : For Falk Fifth Graders , Learning about the Human Anatomy Is a Collective Endeavor
A fifth-grade student holds up the printed image of a liver , positioning it against her classmate ’ s abdomen .
“ What do you think ?” guest speaker George V . Mazariegos , Jamie Lee Curtis Chair in Transplantation Surgery and professor of surgery and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , asks the class . “ Is that the right spot ?”
Micah Downs and Elizabeth King ’ s fifth-grade students call out advice .
Mazariegos is discussing the liver and its function with the students , passing around photographs of livers he has seen in his extensive career and a 3-D-printed liver , complete with blue veins .
This lively presentation , complete with thoughtful questions from the fifth graders , is a fun way to bring the teachers ’ anatomy unit to life .
The unit kicked off several weeks earlier , when Downs and King welcomed a group of Pitt medical students to their classrooms to deliver short presentations on various body systems — digestive , pulmonary and circulatory , among others — to inspire and intrigue the fifth graders .
From there , students explored chosen body systems in groups and through fun activities like a digestion demonstration in which Downs strained food through a stocking to illustrate how food moves through the body .
Working in groups , the students spent class time conducting research on six different body systems . Near the end of the term , the medical students will return to help them refine their work , prepare scripts for movies they will make to present their assignments , select appropriate visual aids and film their movies .
“ Students will get basic information on the muscles , for example ,” says Downs , “ but one group will learn about the muscular system in depth .”
Downs and King are fourth- and fifth-grade teachers at Fanny Edel Falk Laboratory School . Their classes are in the second year of a two-year loop , meaning that these students spent all last year together . And because Downs and King have extensive experience teaching their classes together , these fifth graders are especially familiar with one another and can work together easily .
Leaning on their familiarity with each other and their students is just one way that Downs and King are leveraging some of Falk School ’ s signature strengths .
Pulling from the Falk community
Mazariegos is not the only physician to visit Falk fifth graders or even the only one with a parental connection to the school ( he ’ s the father of three Falk alumni ).
From conversations they ’ d had with students and their parents , Downs and King became aware that a number of classroom parents work in the medical or scientific fields . The realization quickly sparked an idea to invite parents to the classroom for a holistic , interactive anatomy lesson .
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