Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Two for One
Flood or famine, right? Well, to follow up our blog post famine, here is a second post in one day!
So, today I teamed up with a student teacher to present a demonstration on how the immune system works. The student teacher took the initiative to make all sorts of props: placards for the Cd4 helper cells, spears for the B-cell factory, antigens, etc.
Before the demonstration and after the lecture on the topic, I quizzed the students asking them “What is an antigen?” “B-cells do what?” Blank faces abounded. Hmmm. Onward with the demonstration. Using volunteers to hold the placards the teacher and I used the students as live models to show how the HIV virus kills the CD4 Helper cells and makes them unable to “call” the B Cell factory to make antibodies. More blank faces…hmmm. So we went through the demonstration a few more times calling up different students each time to explain what happens to the immune system when HIV antigens enter the body.
At first we had to force students to come up. Eventually, as more and more students went through the story, they started to get it! I knew they got it because they started to volunteer themselves eagerly to come up and show how the “strong and bad HIV antigen murders the CD4 Helper cells who then can no longer call the B Cell factory.” What drama!
Two important lessons were reinforced for me. One, repetition is essential when teaching the Deaf. Shyness and reluctance to participate are likely the students taking time to absorb what’s happening and waiting until they feel comfortable engaging. Two, visual visual visual. It is the only way. Lecturing and simply writing notes on the board does not help Deaf students to understand. Duh. But you would be surprised at how many teachers stand by that method.