By Maren Johnson

The zombies' odd, shambling gait, and their need to hold their arms straight out in front in order to maintain balance?  That's indicative of
damage to the cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for motor
coordination.  The zombies' hunger, and thus their unrelenting urge to chase and eat humans?  Clearly
a problem with the hypothalamus, the appetite control center of the brain—the zombies just don't know when they are full! And all that zombie rage? Oh yeah, that's originating in the amygdala, apparently overactive in the case of zombies.

I started the lesson by giving students a chance to surface their prior knowledge: students wrote answers to the questions, "How do zombies look different from humans?" and "How do zombies behave differently from humans?" We then discussed their answers as a group. I was a bit floored by the response. Students who rarely participated were eager to share, and these students knew A LOT about zombies. All that zombie knowledge gathered over the years from movies, TV shows, books, and video games? Now the students had a chance to share it in an academic setting. They also wanted to know more about the biology involved!

Many of the students were wildly excited about this science lesson.  My choice of words here is deliberate–in one of my class periods, it was a bit, well….wild. Students talking all at once, to me and to each other—they were on topic but almost no one could hear anyone. How to contain the chaos yet still direct that positive energy towards learning?

One reason I happened to be teaching a lesson about zombies was that I missed a few days of school for a professional development event and I was scrambling to get my lesson plans ready for when I came back. A fellow science teacher had pity on me and sent me a link to some public lessons from PBS, "Zombies for Educators." I thought, "I can modify these!"

So there I was, fresh from my professional development
experience, with students excited about the topic but completely talking over one another.  No better time to implement my new learning than now! I had spent a series of days with other ESD science educators piloting a Next Generation Science Standards professional development program. The nature of the Next Generation Science Standards, which integrate content with cross-cutting concepts and science and engineering practices, requires productive science talk in the classroom—the kind of talk that builds minds. In order to get this productive talk, the group of educators I was with discussed the need to establish a positive classroom culture—including the norm that students listen to one another. This also means that students have the responsibility to speak so that others can hear.

In my zombies and brains lesson, this meant that I needed to explicitly establish the expectation that all students listen to one another! I managed to stop the lesson, re-establish that expectation with the students, and we continued on. I have to say, it worked pretty well. Clearly, however, this is something I need to do on a daily basis in my classes until the students and I learn it well.

What am I going to do next to follow up? Well, I'm going to focus on one of the science talk moves we learned about, repeat and paraphrase.

Why am I choosing the talk move, "Can you repeat or rephrase what_________________________ had to say?" After discussion with my fellow participants, I could see four reasons:

• It reinforces the expectation that students listen to one another.
• Because, for the moment, no new ideas are introduced, repeating and paraphrasing is another way of allowing students more wait time, or more time to think.
• This elevates status of both the student who originally spoke and the student who is repeating.
• Repeating or paraphrasing gives additional students the practice of explaining a complex topic in their own words.

Here's the deal: none of this is particularly new to me—because my district is small, we often rely on our E.S.D. for professional development, and I have participated in numerous sessions relating to talk moves. So why haven't I been asking students to repeat or paraphrase one another? It's a simple thing, and effective! I talked to the leader of the session about this. He said, "Just because you have the cool tools, and you know what they are,
putting them into regular practice in your classroom is a very
different thing!" He noted that even regular facilitators have trouble incorporating this. It's difficult to change daily practice!

Maybe I should take a lesson from the zombies. Zombies are creatures of habit, hunting down humans, day after day. Despite their other brain problems, zombie basal ganglia, involved in repetitive learning and habit formation, seem to be fully intact!

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