Chapter 1

The book that we are reading called Rigor by Design Not Chance is broken down into 7 chapters. Chapter 1 starts off by telling us about the foundation of Rigor by Design and helping us better understand the meaning. In the first chapter you will find answers about what deeper learning is, why every student needs access to learning that is deep and rigorous and how mental schemas, productive struggle and neuroscience are related. 


In the book Rigor by Design Not Chance they talk about the 4 different brain lobes and what their functions are. The book gives an example of a “Handy” model, of using your hand to illustrate how the brain looks. To do this you will make two fists and put them together so that your fingernails are touching, your arms are representing the spinal cord that connects your nervous system to the brain. Your fingernails are representing your corpus callosum and they separate the two hemispheres of your brain. When looking at your closed fist and looking at your pinkies, these represent the occipital lobe which is known as the vision center and is located at the back of your head and the base of your brain. Moving onto your ring finger, this represents your temporal lobe where things such as visual, auditory, tactile input is processed. Above your ring finger (temporal lobe) is your middle finger which represents the parietal lobe, this integrates sensory information from different parts of your body and controls motor skills. These 3 lobes are important when it comes to building basic skills such as learning language skills for reading and writing or speaking and learning how to do math and science. The last lobe is also the largest lobe. Looking at your fist model these are the pointer fingers and the thumb. This is the largest part of your brain, located right behind your forehead and is called the frontal lobe. The things that are controlled in this part of your brain are problem solving, reasoning, impulse control, making decisions and working through productive struggle. This is also where executive functioning happens. 


Queensland Brain Institute shares the same information about the brain and how it is two cerebral hemispheres that are connected by the corpus callosum and how the brain is divided into 4 different lobes, the temporal lobe, the occipital lobe, the parietal lobe and the frontal lobe. 

This article goes on to explain what the different lobes control and how they function. 


Both the book and the online resource that I found do a good job at explaining what the different lobes of the brain are and why those different lobes are important and what they each do. They also explain the importance of the lobes' communication with the central nervous system in order for the body to function. 


References 

Lobes of the brain. Queensland Brain Institute - University of Queensland. (2018, July 17). https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/lobes-brain 

Hess, Karin. (2019). Rigor by design, not chance: Deeper thinking through actionable instruction and assessment. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). 


 

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