Human Body Systems FREEBIE and NEW FLIP-UP Books!

Thursday, January 15, 2015

The last unit I tackled with my students in Science focused on the human body AND I had the same usual problem I have every year when this unit sneaks up on me....NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION!!! For the past 3 years, I have been telling myself I need to sit down, research, and write passages about the body systems...the way I like them....and I finally did just that!!! Now, I usually just cover the Digestive System, Respiratory System, and the Circulatory System but I had to add the Muscular and Skeletal System.

Digestive System Foldable Freebie

One thing my students are responsible for knowing is the Digestive System and the roles the different organs play in digestion. In order to do the research that they needed to learn the information, I gave the students the close reading article that I wrote on the Digestive system. After the students completed the research from their close reading passage, they completed the foldable below. First, they diagramed the digestive system on the front of the foldable. Next they wrote about the food's journey through the digestive system inside the foldable. Click on the foldable below to be taken to this free download!

The above example is from one of my most amazing students. She is such a perfectionist and wants to get everything JUST RIGHT. I LOVE it!!! In the close reading passage, the students also wrote their reactions (annotations) to what they were reading. Here is my teacher model...

Now, don't get me wrong, I try to include ALL of the information that the students are curious about, but often times they still have MORE questions that they want to do further research about. For these students, I give them the following form that they can use to access the technology we have in class. This is a research strategy where students "PARSE" a question to get the best possible search results for their "Curiosity Question." Here is a sample of this page. (Click on the page to download)

After the students have learned all of the information, I have the students complete the CLOZE Sentence formatted paragraph with the different roles in that system.

Here is a sample of the Digestive system!