Body Systems Inquiry Project

Unit Topic: Body Systems – Inquiry Unit / Grade: 8 / Author: Michael Burge
Big Ideas / Knowledge of how the systems of the body work and work together can connect to a person’s health and wellness.
Connecting students understanding of the body to how it is valuable to their future. There are so many aspects of life, either personal, professional or past times, that are influenced by your knowledge of the human body.
Critical Questions / How is the integration of the body systems integral to our health and wellness? What are real world examples of body systems working together for health or being connected through illness?
In what ways do our choices influence how our body systems work and how healthy they are?
Why might it be important for you to know about how your body systems work?
How does our understanding of our body influence our interactions with the world and the people around us?
Unit Rationale / Knowledge of one’s own being is a fundamental concept. How can we understand anything around us if we do not understand the very functioning of the body we are in? As a result, studying the systems of the body and how they interact to keep us healthy is extremely important. As the BC Science IRP states, it is important for students to develop scientific understandings and “attitudes that will be relevant in their everyday lives and their future career.” (pg. 11) Once again, what could be more relevant to our everyday lives and future careers than understanding our own bodies? In addition, there is a vast amount of research from the past few years on the declining health of our Canadian population. We are less active and less fit than ever. We are failing to connect our knowledge to our actions. We know how poorly we are living and yet we do not change our living. One of the goals of this unit is to encourage students to connect how their body works to how they live their life. Hopefully, a better understanding of their body systems can lead to a better understanding of the effects of their life choices.
Unit Goals
Students will be able to: / -Identify the individual functioning and processes of the systems of the body
-Demonstrate verbally or visually how the systems of the body work together to maintain a healthy body
-Provide examples of how healthy life style decisions influence the proper functioning of the body
-Provide examples of how knowledge of the body is valuable to life beyond the classroom – does it connect to a future career, a hobby or sport, your personal health or perhaps a medical issue in your family?
-Investigate the inquiry process and identify a few basic strategies of asking questions, setting goals and developing dialogue on a deeper level.
Unit Prescribed Learning Outcomes – This unit will satisfy the following PLOs: / Science
A3 represent and interpret information in graphic form
A4 use models to explain how systems operate
A6 demonstrate ethical, responsible, cooperative behaviour
B3 explain the relationship between cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems
B4 explain the functioning of the immune system, and the roles of the primary, secondary, and tertiary defence systems
Language Arts
A1 interact and collaborate in pairs and groups to
– support the learning of self and others
– explore experiences, ideas, and information
– understand the perspectives of others
– comprehend and respond to a variety of texts – create a variety of texts
B7 after reading and viewing, select and use a range of strategies to extend and confirm meaning, including
– responding to text
– asking questions
– reviewing text and purpose for reading
– making inferences and drawing conclusions
– summarizing, synthesizing, and applying ideas
C2 write purposeful information texts that express ideas and information to
– explore and respond
– record and describe
– analyse and explain
– persuade
– engage
HACE
Healthy Living
-set personal goals for attaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle
-analyse inﬂuences on eating habits, including family, peers, and media
-identify factors that inﬂuence healthy sexual decision making
-demonstrate an understanding of the consequences of contracting sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS (e.g., symptoms, short-term and long-term health issues
Substance Misuse Prevention
Assessment / Formative
-Goal setting, group timeline and responsibilities sheet
-Exit slips – throughout the process, check in on what has been completed, what they are doing to find info on their question
-Personal KWL and wonder wall – continued additions
Summative
-Inquiry Project and Presentation
Learners / The students in the two classes I will be using this are all capable of working on their own. They are experienced in having projects to complete and working in class time to accomplish them. For the most part the projects are teacher directed. I have not seen a lot of inquiry work in the classes. The projects are usually based around a topic or activity chosen by the teacher. I am confident that they are a capable group of students, but I am preparing to introduce inquiry to them and so I expect to have to walk them through it somewhat. There are seven students with designations in each class. The first class has few issues regarding their ability to work. The second class has some students that have difficulty staying on task and will need some help managing their time.
Learning Environment / The inquiry project is going to follow a unit on the body systems. I am going to begin the body systems unit with an individual KWL and then develop and wonder wall to encourage to students to think about questions throughout the unit. During the body systems unit, we are going to do an overview of each system, but encourage each student to consider if there is something about one of the systems that they are really interested in. I am still deciding whether or not the students will work in small groups of 2 or 3 or on their own. I hope to spark their interest by talking about issues related to each body system and having some examples of real life connections, including a guest speaker, the strength and conditioning coach for Rugby Canada.

Following the overviews of each body system, you will be responsible to research and report on one big question pertaining to one of the body systems. You are not limited to those discussed in class (Respiratory, Digestive, Circulatory, Excretory or Immune). You may explore other body systems such as the Nervous System.

You must present one “Big Question” relating your body system to a larger real world issue. For example, “How does pollution contribute to asthma and what are ways that we could reduce the effect?” or “How do the systems of the body work together to maximize performance for an athlete and how can we influence this output?”

______

Your project must be visually presentable and appealing for the class to see (ie poster project, power point, i-movie, etc).

You must include any information required to understand your question. This will likely include:

A discussion of what your question is, why it was interesting to you and why it is important. (1 Paragraph)
The importance of your body system within the human body and how it is linked to at least one other body system (min. 3 paragraphs)
A discussion on issues surrounding your question including possible ideas or solutions you have found in your research or come up with in the process. Also include how this has effected how you think and potentially how you act. (min. 3 paragraphs)
A brief overview of the process involved in completing this project including what strategies and skills you used to answer your question. How did you go about finding the answer? How did you choose what to do? (1 paragraph)
Identify all the major organs/components of your body system
A labelled diagram of your entire body system (i.e., Circulatory System)
A detailed diagram of at least 2 organs in your body system (i.e., Liver & Stomach)

You must include a minimum of 5 references.

You will be presenting this project in front of the class and therefore it should be visually appealing and easy to follow.

Assessment tools

Marking Criteria:

4- Has shown and demonstrated an excellent understanding of their body system. Clearly and effectively identified all components of the body system. Has included all diagrams which are detailed, clear and organized. Has included a thorough and clear explanation of how the body system is important to human survival. Has also linked the body system to another system and clearly and effectively explained why. The project was clearly presented and well organized. All other components of the assignment were fully completed and of exceptional quality.

3- Has shown and demonstrated a good understanding of their body system. Clearly and effectively identified all components of the body system. Has included all diagrams which are well organized Has included an explanation of how the body system is important to human survival. Has also linked the body system to another system and explained why. The project was clearly presented and well organized. All other components of the assignment were fully completed and of good quality.

2- Has shown and demonstrated a satisfactory understanding of their body system. Clearly and effectively identified most of the components of the body system. Has included most diagrams; some may be omitted or unclear. Has included a basic explanation of how the body system is important to human survival. Has also linked the body system to another system and explained why. The project was presented in a satisfactory fashion; sometimes it was difficult to follow. Overall the remaining components of the assignments demonstrated a satisfactory understanding.

1- Has not met the criteria for the body systems project. Assignment is either inaccurate, missing major components or incomplete. Project was difficult to understand and very unclear in both content and presentation.

Resources:

1)People

Andrew Evans
Certified Exercise Physiologist, CSEP
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, NSCA
Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Men’s Program – Rugby Canada
Andy will be a guest speaker who will come and talk about how important it is to understand your body to have it function properly as well as some potential career paths if student really want to pursue this topic.
Michael Collins
Celebrate Recovery Coordinator
Works with a lot of people working through issues related to ways they have mistreated their body.
Michael will be a guest speaker who will dsicuss how our choices effect our body. Often our body reaps the rewards or punishments of the decisions we make.

2)Books

Coster-Longman, C. (2001.) The Human Body. Scholastic Canada LTD.
Great overview of the body systems.
Fold open pages with fantastic diagrams and sidebars with good breakdowns on the tissue level
Use this for diagrams and basic understanding and anatomy of systems
Body Works Book Series
Fromer, L. & Gerstein MD, Dr. F. (2011) My Achy Body. Toronto Ont.: Tundra
My Healthy Body
My Messy Body
My Noisy Body
My Stretchy Body
This series is for a younger age group
Even for older students has some fantastic triva and hints that may lead them toward inquiry questions
Great to use to get them intriqued and thinking, especially students who might be having trouble finding a question.
LeDrew, B. (2006). BC Science Probe 8. Toronto Ont.: Thomson Nelson
Good overview of systems
Good starting point for basic info.
Levchuck, C., Drohan, M., & Koseck, J. (2000). Healthy Living (Vol. 1). Gale Group.
More in depth discussion on issues and choices effecting the body.
More complex writing and a higher level, but not above grade 8.
This would be good for students who have a question and need some more info on how it connects to how we live.
Macnair, Dr. P., (2005). Building Blocks: Cells, organs, and body systems. Boston: Kingfisher
Nice and simple diagrams and information
A great starting point for each body system.
Very simple writing.
McMillan, Beverly. (2006) Human body: A visual guide. Reader's Digest
Fantastic Book!
Excellent diagrams and pictures
A really great level of writing for grade 8
Information on all the systems as well as all kinds of issues, concerns, and topics surrounding them.
Parker, S. (1993). Eyewitness Science - HumanBody.Stoddart Publishing Co.
Good book for diagrams
Lots of short, informative chunks of information
Great connections to history
Tortora and Grabowski. (2003). Principles of anatomy and physiology. John Wiley & Sons.
University level text book
Fantastic amount of information on all the body systems and how they work.
May be above some students’ ability level.
For some students this is an excellent resource to figure out functioning and get deeper into the body system they have chosen.

3)Online

Great website with a kids, teens and parents section
Great possible question guiding links – topics include drug awareness, food and fitness, body, minds, diseases
Videos, articles, activities, links
website with overviews and interactive diagrams of the body systems
also includes anatomy related careers
The Franklin Institute -
Information, diagrams and pictures of the heart
How Stuff Works
Specifically -
Quizzes, info on body systems and body parts
Diseases and conditions
Medicine and mental health
Include interesting topics section – What makes your knuckles pop, How does the spine form.
Includes all kinds of videos, pics and articles about how the body works and issues related to health
Animations on how the body works and disorders that affect it.
Online interactive body
Requires plugin
Link to top 10 body websites
Has some good links to other sights that could be used as resources.
This page has links to resources for a number of different ages.

4)Podcast