Trying to make learning more interactive and fun, anatomy teacher Sherie Jenkins takes out boxes of plastic bones and has her students label and feel the different parts.

“In order to learn it all, the kids put tape on their models and they put tape on all the bones on their own bodies with the names of the bones on it,” she said.

During the couple of weeks spent learning about the bones, students were taught in a variety of entertaining ways.

“We spent two weeks with ‘bone boxes,’” junior Taryn Tolle said. “Mrs. Jenkins separated the bones into categories like ‘head and spine,’ ‘arms’ and ‘legs’ so that we got hands-on time with all the bones.”

Jenkins points out that this assignment is all in preparation for a lab practical exam at the end of the section. A lab practical means that the students have to show some type of a performance.  Students had to learn the names and movements of all 206 bones in the body. For the exam, the bones were laid around the room at stations, and the students rotated to each station every minute and a half.

“I just had stickers with numbers on them attached to the bones, and on the sheet I said ‘what is the name of this bone.’ They just write down their answer by the same number,” Jenkins said.

Memorizing all the names and functions of the bones may seem like a lot of work, but students such as Tolle believe that this was beneficial for her own and others’ futures.

“I think I’ll always remember this information since I’ll be using it in college,” Tolle said. “I really like the way the lab was done. I can’t think of a way that it could’ve been done better.”

By Ashleigh Rabel