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Brain Injuries: Compelling Programming & Resources

imagesThis Tuesday, October 8, at 9pm, WGBY airs League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.  In a special investigation, FRONTLINE joins prize-winning journalists Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada to reveal the hidden story of brain injuries and the NFL, which is under assault as thousands of former players and a host of scientists claim the league has covered up how football inflicted long-term brain injuries on many players.

The FRONTLINE investigation details how, for years, the league denied and worked to refute scientific evidence that the violent collisions at the heart of the game are linked to an alarming incidence of early onset dementia, catastrophic brain damage, death, and other devastating consequences for some of football’s all-time greats.  Watch a preview.

Here are a few examples from pages of classroom resources about the brain at PBS LearningMedia:

Brain Safety Design Challenge (Grades 5-12)  In this Teaching Channel video, Channa Comer introduces her 6th graders to the design process through an engineering challenge to design a football helmet to prevent injury, using an egg as a model head. (Includes background essay, audio description and discussion questions)
The Teenage Brain (Grades 6-8)  Why do teenagers act the way they do? This video segment and discussion questions from FRONTLINE: “Inside the Teenage Brain” explores the work scientists are doing to explain some of the mysteries of teenage behavior.
Journey Into the Brain (Grades 9-12)  In this lesson plan that uses segments from the PBS program The Human Spark, students learn about the human brain, including information about brain regions, brain activity and technologies used to explore brain activity.

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