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6C Basic Functions #1
The human body has parts that help it seek, find, and take in food when it feels hunger eyes and noses for detecting food, legs to get to it, arms to carry it away, and a mouth to eat it....
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My Body Helps Me Get Food
Purpose
To learn that the human body has parts that enable people to get food and to eat.
Context
This lesson focuses on students learning that some parts of their body help to keep their body nourished with food. At the K-2 level, you can expect that students will think of their body parts as rather separate entities, with each part having its own function. It is not until they are older that they begin to understand their body parts in terms of a system. "Children at this level think each organ has its own independent function. The eyes are for seeing, the brain is for thinking, the stomach is for digesting food, and so forth. Only later will students be able to learn how organs work in coordinated ways to make systems. One can expose young children to some of the facts in response to their questions, but they cannot understand those facts until they are older." (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 136.)
It is most meaningful for students of the K-2 level to concentrate on the most familiar body parts and to learn some basic facts about the function of each of these parts. For example, legs are for walking and running. Fingers help us grasp items. Our eyes enable us to see. The benchmark for this lesson focuses specifically on the role various body parts play in helping us find and eat food. Although we have clarified that students of this level do not yet understand the human body as a coordinated system, challenging students to think about various body parts in relationship to eating helps students begin to see that each body part plays an important yet different role for accomplishing the same task—human nourishment. While focusing on the specific functions of single body parts, this lesson highlights that we use each of these parts for making sure we stay nourished.
Beginning with a hands-on game of matching, this lesson introduces students to the concept that body parts serve a purpose; each part has a function. Branching off from a fun and informative online human anatomy game, this lesson then utilizes individual student sheets for much of the student exploration. The primary focus of the student work will be to identify a number of ways that their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, legs, and fingers help them to seek, find, and eat food.
It is important to bear in mind that not all people have full use of all their body parts. If you have differently-abled students in your classroom, you most likely already address this as a group throughout the year. If you have no students with physical disabilities in your class, your students may not be aware of the different ways people can complete familiar tasks, such as getting and eating their food. This lesson asks students to think about persons with disabilities as it relates to this benchmark, and offers some ideas and resources for guiding discussions and answering questions around this issue.
Ideas in this lesson are also related to concepts found in the following benchmark:
- 7A Human Society: Cultural Effects on Behavior (K-2) #1
Planning Ahead
Materials:
Motivation
Encourage students to think about their body and its parts by having them play a quick human body matching game. Use the pairs of cards found on the Body Parts Matching teacher sheet—one card names the body part, the second card indicates the body part's function. Because this lesson focuses on eyes, ears, nose, mouth, legs, and fingers, the cards use these parts for this activity. Using cards that are related to the seeking, gathering, and eating of food will keep the activity focused on the benchmark. If you have a large group, simply make duplicate pairs of the cards. After passing these cards out to students, ask them to walk around and find the person whose card matches theirs.
Bring students together as a group after this activity for a discussion about the body parts they matched. You could ask:
- What body parts did you match?
- How does this part of your body help to make sure that you get food to eat?
- Can you describe a time when you used this body part to help you get food?
- If this part of your body did not work, how could you still get and eat your food?
Since this matching game is based on body parts that function healthily, this may be an appropriate time to talk with students about what people do to accomplish these same tasks if they have a disability. It will help students think about physical challenges if they first consider what information they gather with healthy body parts. You might ask questions in pairs. You could ask:
- What can you find out about an orange by looking at it?
- If your eyes cannot see, how else could you find out this same information?
- What can you find out about spaghetti by smelling it?
- If your nose cannot smell, how else could you find out this same information?
- What can you find out about a banana by touching it?
- If your fingers cannot feel or you do not have any fingers, how else could you find out this same information?
- How could your ears help you get food?
- If your ears cannot hear, how else could you find out this same information?
- How do your legs help you get your food?
- If your legs cannot walk or you do not have any legs, how else could you get your food?
- What can you find out about an apple by tasting and chewing it?
- If your mouth cannot taste or chew, what else could you do to learn about taste or to swallow your food?
This discussion will require your sensitivity and patience with students. For some, this will be their first exposure to disabilities. Others may have friends or family who are disabled and may be excited to share what they know or feel shy about this topic with others. It may be important to support this conversation with follow-up discussions, as well as with visual images, materials, and literature around the classroom. These websites may be useful teacher resources:
Development
Using the Your Amazing Body student E-Sheet to guide them, students will play the Your Amazing Body activity on the Sesame Workshop site. For the purposes of this lesson, have students play the "outside" body parts game (the "outside" version is actually the default). This is a fun way for students to continue thinking about the roles their various parts play in their everyday functioning.
Once students have had a chance to play this online game, give them the Body Parts Wheel student sheet. You will notice that this sheet is a wheel similar to that on the online activity, except the middle circle is blank. Using old magazine pictures, ask students to cut and past some of their favorite foods in this middle circle. Students could also use stamps, draw the pictures themselves, and/or write the foods in this space. The idea here is for students to create a page that illustrates the body parts and shows a variety of foods.
After students have completed this wheel, bring them together for a group discussion about the ways these various body parts help them to seek, gather, and eat food. To facilitate the discussion, you might ask:
"If you want to get food,"
- How could your eyes help you? (Ask this same question for each body part on the wheel.)
- Where are some places that you have seen food? (Again, ask for each body part.)
- What if your eyes could not see? How would this affect how you get food? (You may need to help them think about how they may choose what they eat by what it looks like; they may identify a flavor by seeing its color; they know whether or not it needs to be peeled by seeing the peel, etc.) Again, encourage this discussion for each body part listed on the wheel.
To help students think more about how these body parts help them seek and eat food, ask them to work on the Thinking About Your Body student sheet. Depending on the level of your students, you will ask them to draw or write their responses.
Assessment
It is helpful for students to review and reflect upon what they have been learning throughout this lesson. It is also helpful for you to assess how well they have understood the material. To help with both of these goals, consider asking students to break into small groups (groups of 4-5 work well). Give each group the How My Body Parts Can Help student sheet for writing their ideas. Assign each group one food, and ask them to brainstorm as many ideas as possible about how each body part could aide in the "seeking, finding, and taking in" of that food. Each group should have a few ideas for each body part. Once students have had an opportunity to do this, each group can share with the class the ideas they discussed.
You could also encourage a class discussion, asking questions like:
- What is one new thing that you learned about your body parts and how they help you get food?
- Do you think you use one body part more than the others to help you get your food? Which one? Why?
- Do you think you sometimes use more than one body part at a time for getting your food?
- Do you use your body parts for getting food during school lunch the same way you use them during dinner time at home?
- Does being outside or inside affect how you use your body parts for getting food?
Extensions
Because the main objective of this lesson was to address the benchmark, most of the work assumed that people had full use of their bodies. Again, it is important for students to think about these concepts in the context of disabilities as well. This topic would be a meaningful area for further learning around this benchmark.
One way to extend the learning would be for students to do an exercise where they close their eyes (hold their nose, etc.) and try to find food that you have in the classroom. You could ask what senses they used to find it. This activity may better enable students to know what it feels like to not be able to have use of all their body parts.
The following are websites about disabilities that are geared specifically for young students:
Other useful Web resources for more general human anatomy topics include:
Created : 08/15/2003 |