Dr. Susie Nyman from the Sixth Form College in Farnborough has introduced a creative and engaging method using Play-Doh to help students understand complex biological concepts. As the Curriculum Manager for Health and Social Care with 24 years of teaching experience, Dr. Nyman’s approach makes learning more interactive and memorable. 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:
“The students would not be able to remember the left and right side of the heart, for example, but if they made it out of Play-Doh, then they could remember it a lot better. We would use mini whiteboards and put the models on them and then label the diagrams with board markers.
Here’s an example of using Play-Doh or modelling clay to make neurons. The students didn’t really understand the difference between a sensory, motor, and relay neuron. So, these would be motor neurons. Here you’ve got the cell body, the axon, the Schwann cells on the outside with the nuclei, and at the end, we’ve got the dendrites. Here’s another one with the cell body, the axon, the Schwann cells with the nuclei in them, and the dendrites at the end.”
