Exploring the left and right sides of the brain

EXPLORING THE LEFT AND RIGHT SIDES OF THE BRAIN.

Objectives:

This lesson is designed for use with 5th-8th graders. The purpose of the lesson is to have students become familiar with the left and right hemispheres of the human brain and to engage in activities that activate powers that are dominant in each hemisphere. This lesson could be used as a culminating activity after a unit on the brain.

Materials Needed:

* Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards, Chapter 1-4 for

*teacher reference*

* model of brain (if available)

*For each student*

ACTIVITES

* Any logic activity (I used AIMS Logic Activity "Who's Who on the Baseball Team?" from AIMS Newsletter July/August 1993)

* Copies of an optical illusion (I used "Old Lady, Young Lady")

* Copies of Cartoon of dog, from Your Body kit, (Lucas Manufacturing Company)

* drawing paper and pencils

Background Information:

During the 1960's, doctors discovered through working with patients that had severe epileptic seizures that each hemisphere of the brain processes information differently. Through a series of tests they concluded that both hemispheres use high-level cognitive modes, which although different, involve thinking, reasoning, and complex mental functioning. The left hemisphere is dominant in verbal, analytic, abstract and logical activities. The right hemisphere is dominant in nonverbal, analogic, nontemporal, intuitive, and spatial activities. (Refer to page 40 in Drawing on the Right Side of theBrain. Note differences in language domain in the left side and spatial domain on right side.)

Strategy:

1. Work with a partner to do "Who's Who on the Baseball Team?" Teacher should

coach students to follow directions in a sequential manner. Model by doing the first two items with students.

2. When students are finished, go over the answers and discuss how they reached their conclusions. Lead them to understand that the logical thinking they engaged in was based on putting information in order or in sequence.

3. Teacher explains the theory of the brain's left and right hemispheres. (See Background Information.)

4. Give students directions to make a face-vase drawing:

a) Draw a profile of a person's head on the upper left side of the paper,

having the profile face towards the center of the paper. (Left-handed students should start on the right side of paper). Try to use your own memorized symbols for a human profile.

b) Draw horizontal lines on the top and bottom of your profile, forming the top and bottom of the vase.

c) Go over your drawing of the first profile with your pencil, naming the features to yourself as you go, i.e., forehead, nose, upper lip, lower lip, chin, neck. Repeat this step at least once. This is a left- hemisphere task -- naming symbolic shapes.

d) Starting at the right side of the horizontal line, (the left side for left handers) draw a second profile facing the center of the paper. The second profile should be a reversal of the first in order to be symmetrical. You may experience a sense of mental conflict at some point in the drawing of the second profile. Observe this and observe how you solve the problem.

5. Elicit discussion from the students about their experience in drawing the profile/vase. Lead them to understand that the first side of the profile was done from memory and from naming the parts. This is left-hemisphere mode.

To complete the drawing, students probably had to scan back and forth in the space between the profiles, estimating angles, curves, inward-curving and outward curving shapes, which now had become unnamed parts -- shapes of space between the two profiles. This is right-hemisphere mode -- thinking without.