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Content Area: Health and Physical Education
Index: 2.1B Grade 4 CPI 1
Standard: 2.1 - Wellness
Strand: B - Growth and Development
Cumulative Progress Indicator: 1 - The student will describe the structure and function of human body systems.
Grade: 4
Sample Activities:
· SYSTEMS THAT WORK TOGETHER - Brainstorm the names of various body systems and write them on the chalkboard. Students work in pairs to discover information about one assigned body system and develop an oral presentation using charts, pictures, computer graphics, or models. Frame the assignment by giving each student a list of specific questions to answer about the assigned body system.
Variation: Working in small groups, students create a graphic organizer on a body system. Each group uses the organizer to teach the rest of the class about their chosen system.
· HUNTING GROUND - For this activity, set up five or more body organ or system stations (e.g., a station for skin, lungs, bones). At each station, provide an assortment of reading material, worksheets, models, video, or computer programs on the body organ or system. Students brainstorm questions about their bodies and seek the answers to the questions via a quest, visiting each station to hunt for the answers (you may want to add a few questions of your own). Students write a summary of the activity, including the answers to the questions.
Variation: Design several stations that focus on the various parts of one system
(e.g., white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets as part of a blood
station project). · BODY SYSTEM PUPPETS - This activity is adapted from The Organic Puppet Theatre by Terry Schultz and Linda Sorenson. The book describes a number of creative projects to illustrate the functions of various body parts. This activity focuses on the stomach. For this activity, you need plastic page protectors, tape, self-sealing plastic sandwich bags, crackers, and water. Provide students with a black-line master of a stomach (with a smiling face). Students cut out the stomach and color it. Next, take a plastic page protector and cut it in half. Roll it up from the short end to make a plastic tube with a diameter about the size of a quarter. Tape the ends securely. Cut a hole about the size of a quarter in the middle of the plastic tube. Next, take a self-sealing sandwich bag and cut 2 slits below the self-sealing line so the tube can slide right in. Place the plastic tube in the bag through the slits. After discussing the role of the stomach, help the students tape the stomach puppet to the back of the sandwich bag so the smiling stomach shows through the bag. Hold the puppet by the tube and fill the bag with water. Seal the bag. Give each student three or four crackers and allow them to eat one or two. Students see, via their puppet, what is happening to the crackers they are eating. Crumble the crackers and start pushing the pieces down the tube. Explain to the students that this simulates crushing food with your teeth and that saliva from your mouth helps to soften the food before it enters the stomach. Students watch as the crackers mix with the “stomach juices” (the water). Discuss the process of digestion and the role the stomach plays in maintaining wellness.
Variation: Students create an entire body of puppets and stage a puppet show
based on an original informational story developed in round-robin fashion by the
class. · THERE'S A SKELETON IN YOUR CLOSET! - Using models, pictures, and X rays, students compare the human skeleton to the skeleton of various animals. Students create a comparison-contrast chart describing the similarities and differences.
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