Dr. Susie Nyman from the Sixth Form College in Farnborough has implemented an innovative and tactile method using modelling clay to help students understand complex biological systems. As the Curriculum Manager for Health and Social Care with 24 years of teaching experience, Dr. Nyman’s approach makes learning more interactive and enjoyable. Below is a transcript of Dr. Nyman’s explanation.
Dr. Susie Nyman from the Sixth Form College in Farnborough serves as the Curriculum Manager for Health and Social Care. With 24 years of teaching experience at the Sixth Form College, she shared an innovative teaching method:
“A few years ago, I actually started pottery classes and began making models out of clay. I made red blood cells, white blood cells, and the students could feel the difference between the different types of blood cells. Here is an example of where I’ve used pottery to make a diagram of the digestive system. I find that students can actually feel what the parts are.
So, this would be the oesophagus, this would be the stomach. This would be the liver. We’ve got the gallbladder, we’ve got the pancreas. In here, we’ve got the small intestine, and here we’ve got the large intestine going to the colon, rectum, and anus. It’s really important to recognise the shapes within the diagram, such as the J shape in the stomach, the triangular shape in the liver, the small circular gallbladder, the leaf shape for the pancreas, lots of small intestine, and a larger diameter intestine.
OK, so this is a volcano. Hopefully, it will erupt. Now, volcanoes produce lava, which is really useful in geography. There are different types of lava created depending on where it comes out and how quickly it solidifies. If it solidifies slowly, it produces nice, beautiful crystals. If it solidifies very quickly, the crystals aren’t as beautiful. It also produces bombs out of the volcano as well. Here, we’re going to see if we can get the volcano to erupt. This is tomato sauce, which contains acid. What I’m going to add to it is sodium bicarbonate. There we go, the volcano is erupting. You can see the lava coming up the top of the volcano and going down the sides of the mountain. It’s amazing.”
