Okuma-Konuşma, The Teenage Brain

UNIT 6 READING 2 THE TEENAGE BRAIN

Suggested Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain.html

Lead in: Brainstorm OR write the selected keywords on the board and try to make the students reflect on them and discover how much familiar they are with these terms.

Keywords: teenager, adolescence, childhood, adulthood, dramatic, hormone, penalty, MRI images, crucial, visual/spatial processing, predict, neuron, lobe/hemisphere

Brainstorm about the differences between teenagers and adults. Suggested answers:

Teenagers                                                                            Adults

Being more emotional                                                      Understanding the emotions of others

Showing poor judgment                                                   Using good judgment

Being more willing to take risks                                      Not conveying their emotions

Experiencing more lack of sleep                                     More likely to be logical

Often misunderstanding the emotions of others

Pre-Reading Questions

a)       When is your earliest class hour? Are you happy with it or would you prefer it to be at a later hour?

b)       What time do students at primary and secondary school wake up to catch their classes? Do you like this system or is it possible to make some changes for them to arrange these class hours?

Getting a first idea about the article

 The book asks the students to focus on the pictures on pages 216,217 and 218. Pair work is suggested to discuss the questions. After they discuss with a partner, you may focus on the pictures as a whole class and direct these suggested questions to them to encourage discussion.

For the cartoon on page 216: -Do you agree with what this man says? (or do you think we should worry about our future or just leave it and stop worrying? )

For the photo on page 217: - Have you taken such a risk when you were a teenager? If your answer is yes, what was the result? Did it result in any bad events?

-          Are you still willing to take risks? What kind of risks would you take?

For the photo on page 218: -How often do you feel the same as the girl in this photo? What are your reasons?

While-Reading Questions:

PAR. 1

a)       What are some of the differences between teenagers and adults?

b)       What are the reasons of these differences?

PAR. 2

a)       Which parts of the brain develop earlier and which parts develop later?

b)       Why don’t teenagers consider the consequences of their actions? (or why aren’t they good at planning? )

PAR. 3

a)       Whose emotional responses are better? Teenagers’ or adults’?

b)       What’s the cause of this difference?

c)       Why do teenagers often misunderstand other people’s behavior?

d)        Did you ever experience such a misunderstanding when you were a teenager?

PAR. 4

a)       Why can’t teenagers use good judgment?

PAR. 5

You may ask these questions before they read par. 5 and make them scan the paragraph and find the answer.

a)       What’s a biological clock?

b)       Why do teenagers need more sleep than adults?

PAR. 6

a)       Do you like the system mentioned in par.6? Can we adapt it in Turkey?

Collocations: to use good/poor judgment, make decisions, take something into account, lack of sleep, raise questions, bring about changes, commit crime, take into account, biological clock, predict consequences, make sense