13 Sept 2012,

This week I spent two hours with student going over human anatomy again from previous week. Again the learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions. Human anatomy requires memorization and functions of assigned organs and systems’ expanding from what was learned from last week. We spent an hour on human anatomy on two different days spending some time on the cards from previous week. 

  

When talking to student, I asked if he could tell me by elaborating on the subject human anatomy. I could see his hands moving over specific parts of the body identifying specific muscle groups and the locations of major organs as he started to go through the function of each. I believe the student gains strong form of mental model when working with the subject, but has to be directed into this form. At the beginning of his anatomy class he struggled to even put into perspective the location of these groups. I believe that his mental model has expanded, because now he asks questions as to “what if” I breathed in dust or smoke, actually visualizing what the particles are doing to his body.

Being that this is fairly new to me, I think I understand the concept but trying to match to every situation can be a bit difficult. I believe this works well on subjects that require more technical or complex problem solving vs. English or Art classes.  

I believe I reacted better after understanding the principles of the mental model and my approach to different ways to interact with student and expand on student’s model. I think that by understanding his model, and having a clear precise plan to what needs to be taught and learned that we can both better ourselves. It was hard to tell if the lessons made an impact yet or not but as mentioned above I see that he is thinking differently trying to put things together.