BMUFSD: Seventh Graders Create Neuron Models

Press release from the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District:

It’s not every day that seventh graders at Briarcliff Middle School use pom-poms, Model Magic clay, pipe cleaners and beads in science class.

Students in Jessica Loprieno’s enrichment class created colorful models of neurons with arts and crafts supplies and then used them to make stop motion animation videos to show how an electrical impulse travels.

Orlaith and Sam based their model on a drawing of a neuron on Orlaith’s iPad.

“Usually we just do regular classwork,” Sam said. “It’s fun to do a craft that we would normally do in art class.”

“They are doing a really nice job on their neuron models,” Ms. Loprieno said. “It’s an enrichment class through Project Lead the Way, but it happens to coincide with what we are currently learning about in science class.”

According to Ms. Loprieno, students have been learning about how neurons are the cells that make up the nervous system.

Once the students finished creating the models, they began working on their stop motion animation videos.

“You can use a pom-poms or designate any other object to represent the electrical impulse, and then take pictures of it as it travels from the dendrite down the axon,” Ms. Loprieno said.

Students placed their iPads in a mount to stabilize it for the pictures they were taking. One student took the photos, while the other moved the pompom along the axon on the model they created.

“It’s quite simple, it’s just taking a bunch of photos,” Tami said.

This is Ms. Loprieno’s second year of teaching this course since training for it in the summer of 2021 as part of Professional Development.

“I picked the Medical Detectives course because it aligns with seventh-grade curriculum,” she said.

Ms. Loprieno said that the previous unit in this course was all about the human body and diagnosing illnesses on pretend patients. This unit is about the nervous system so the next activity will be diagnosing nerve disorders. The culminating activity in the unit will be dissecting sheep’s brains so students will be able to understand how the different regions of the brain work together.

“It is a great program, I am very happy with it.”

This press release was produced by the Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.