Lesson 2.3: Healthy Vision and Hearing

Overview

This lesson focuses on your eyes, how you see, protecting your vision, and common vision problems. This lesson also focuses on how you hear, protecting your hearing, social norms and listening behavior, and hearing loss.

Learning Targets

  • Explain how vision works.
  • Compare nearsightedness and farsightedness.
  • Describe what eye strain is and explain how to help reduce it.
  • Explain how hearing works.
  • Identify the four levels of hearing loss.
  • Reflect on how social media and technology affect vision and hearing behaviors.

Preparation

For the Warm-Up Activity: Write the journal question on the board, or identify (and copy as needed) the worksheets you plan to use:

For the Content Focus: Open the Lesson 2.3 PowerPoint slides, or make copies of the Lesson 2.3 Note-Taking Guide.

For the Lesson Focus: Copy the Lesson 2.3 Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet: Analyzing Social Norms on Vision and Hearing Behaviors.

Warm-Up Activity

Select a warm-up activity to help get your class focused and on task.

  • Journal Question: How many hours did you spend wearing earbuds or headphones this week? How many hours did you spend looking at a screen (your phone, television, tablet, computer)? Do you think these behaviors affect the health of your eyes and ears? Explain your answer.
    • Option: Write or project the question, and have students respond in their journals as they enter class.
    • Option: Have students discuss the question with a partner or in a small group.
  • Vocabulary Review: Have students work individually, in partners, or in small groups to complete the Lesson 2.3 Vocabulary Review Worksheet.
  • Quiz: Have students complete the Lesson 2.3 Quiz to assess their prior knowledge.
    • Option: Collect the quizzes, and use them alongside posttests to demonstrate student learning.
    • Option: Have students share their answers with a partner and then go over the answers together as a class.

Lesson Content

Review the content from the textbook lesson.

Option: Use the Lesson 2.3 PowerPoint slides to review the chapter content.

Option: Have students use the Lesson 2.3 Note-Taking Guide to review chapter content. Ask students to work alone, in pairs, or in small groups. Review the questions as a class if time permits.

Lesson Focus: Analyzing Social Norms on Vision and Hearing Behaviors

  1. Give each student a copy of the Skill-Building Worksheet: Analyzing Social Norms on Vision and Hearing Behaviors.
  2. Have students work individually to complete the worksheet.
  3. Ask students to pair up and share their responses.
  4. On the board, draw the rectangle graphic from the worksheet. Have student volunteers share influences or social norms on their vision and hearing. In the outside rectangle, write their responses. Next, ask each student who shared how each influence or social norm has influenced their behavior, and write that response in the inside rectangle.

Challenge Activity

Have students who need an additional challenge work on the following critical-thinking task.

Many teenagers listen to music and other media through headphones, and often listen at dangerous levels. Imagine you could look into the future and saw that you would go deaf later in life. What would you say to yourself? Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of your older self. Give yourself the best advice you can to help prevent hearing loss later.

Reflection and Summary

Review the critical content from today’s lesson. Review the learning targets, and ask students to answer each question posed.

Can you…

  • Explain how vision works?
    • How the eye works:
      1. Light enters the eye through the cornea (eye lens).
      2. Your pupil changes shape to let in the appropriate amount of light.
      3. Your retina, in the back of the eye, receives an upside-down copy of the image.
      4. Your retina sends electrical signals on the optic nerve to your brain, and your brain produces a right-side-up image.
  • Compare nearsightedness and farsightedness?
    • Nearsightedness (myopia): Can clearly see objects that are up close, but have a harder time seeing objects in the distance
    • Farsightedness (hyperopia): A condition where light focuses behind the retina and objects that are up close are hard to see clearly
  • Describe what eye strain is and explain how to help reduce it?
    • Eye strain is a form of fatigue that happens to your eyes when they have to focus on a close-up object for long periods of time, such as a computer screen. Best treatment for eye strain is to cut back on the hours of screen time you have each day.
  • Explain how hearing works?
    • Your ears are very complex organs that help you take in sound waves from the environment and convert them into things you recognize. The outer ear, or pinna, is the large part of your ear that other people see. It helps to gather sound waves that then pass through the ear canal. The ear canal produces earwax; it also makes the sound waves 60 times louder so that you can hear them. Your eardrum vibrates the sound waves into the middle ear, where three small bones further vibrate the sound waves into the cochlea in the inner ear. The cochlea is a spiral tube that looks like a very small seashell. It is covered in nerve cells that convert the vibrations into nervous impulses. These impulses travel down the auditory nerve to the brain, where you interpret the impulses as sounds.
  • Identify the four levels of hearing loss?
    • Mild, moderate, severe, and profound
  • Reflect on how social media and technology affect vision and hearing behaviors?
    • Social norms (going everywhere with cell phone, earbuds in ears most of the day, etc.) act like unofficial rules or laws. We are influenced by social norms because we want to fit into a particular social group.

Assessment

Complete one or more of the following assessment tasks for this lesson.

  • Quiz: Have students take the Lesson 2.3 Quiz.
  • Vocabulary Review: Collect the Lesson 2.3 Vocabulary Review Worksheets, and evaluate them for accuracy.
  • Note-Taking Guide: Collect the completed Lesson 2.3 Note-Taking Guide, and spot check one or more items for completion and accuracy.
  • Skill-Building Worksheet: Have students submit the Lesson 2.3 Skill-Building Challenge Worksheet: Analyzing Social Norms on Vision and Hearing Behaviors and use the Holistic Rubric: Analyzing Influences to evaluate their skill development.
  • Journal Question: Ask students to respond to the journal question again, adding information they learned from today’s class. Require a one-paragraph response that uses proper grammar.

Take It Home

Talk to someone in your life who spends a lot of time in front of a screen, like a sibling who watches too much TV, a cousin who plays video games for hours every day, or a parent or guardian who works in front of a computer all day. Explain to them what eye strain is and give them some advice about how to avoid it. Write down the important points that you will share.