HELP! Human Anatomy class....

[shatfield1982]

Hello all, I am in a bit of a rut....This is my first year teaching a Human Anatomy course and I am really trying to make it fun and engaging for the students. I'm have a very tough time with this because the class is pretty much all memorization. I know Anatomy classes are usually fairly boring across the board, but do yall have any ideas or suggestions for good lab/activity books?

Desperate for help!

[Brit]

well, when I took anatomy in university, we cut up cats. but if that's not an option (pray god it isn't, I was totally grossed out), you could just cash in on the silliness factor...I mean, if you have a skeleton in the room, the options are realy endless. And one of the take-apart organs bodies? dude, better than a rubix cube. Yes, I can see that there's a lot of memorization, but that doesn't mean it can't be hands on and entertaining. one of our final lab assessments in that same university course was to make the skeleton sing "the knee bones connected to the...." but using all of the correct terminology for the bones. I think our TA's were a little high, but it got it done! (we also, by the way, needed to make our cats do a little song and dance about the parts of the circulatory system...it was so, so wrong).

I don't know if that really helps, but it might trigger some ideas in others. simply put, just be kooky and have fun and your class will buy in. They may think you're ready for the nut house, but then, what one of us isn't?