PhUn Week: A One Day Program for K‐8 Students

Abstract

As part of Physiology Understanding Week activities, we developed a one day program of both demonstration and interactive science sessions that were tailored to school children ranging in age from 5‐14 that was presented at a local private catholic primary school. The goal of this program was to encourage creativity and scientific curiosity in primary school children. Sessions ranged from 40‐55 min, depending on age. The program was created to draw on the expertise of three presenters on to engage students with interactive demonstrations. Of the topics covered, we used suggestions from the American Physiological Society as well as added areas of acoustic demonstrations, visual perception and visual/auditory integration, proprioceptive field demonstrations, and finally cardiac and cerebrovascular physiology demonstrations. Examples of these included demonstrations of the occlusion effect (acoustic), the McGurk effect (audio‐visual integration), the waterfall effect (visual illusion), transcranial Doppler (cerebrovascular physiology), and beat‐by‐beat blood pressure demonstrations during resting and activity (exercise physiology). Feedback from these demonstrations was generally positive. Both students and teachers verbalized appreciation of the added material. The goal of this poster is to provide a complete one day program that physiologists can use to encourage interest in physiology among primary school children.