Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning by Scott McLeod

Author:Scott McLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Middle School Health

For our fifth example of lesson or unit redesign, let’s look at a middle school health lesson. One traditional lesson is to ask students to imagine that they are food traveling through the digestive system. Some teachers use a Food Postcards activity to conduct this lesson.

Food Postcards

In this lesson, teachers give students the task of creating a series of postcards to describe a trip through the digestive system. More specifically, students select a particular food and then create five postcards that they compose from that food item’s point of view. On one side of each postcard, students draw a picture of something the food might “see” on its journey. On the other side of each postcard, students write a description of the events the food experiences. For example, suppose the food a student chooses is an apple. The postcard describing the mouth might have a picture of teeth on the front. The message on the back might begin, “Dear Mac, so far I have had a miserable trip. I haven’t even left the mouth yet, and already the teeth that you see on the other side of this postcard have torn me apart, crushed me, and cut me into pieces.”

For this lesson, teachers expect students to include the structures and functions of the digestive system that they describe and define any health terms that they use in their descriptions. Students’ first postcards feature the mouth, and students should mention the role of the teeth in mechanical digestion and the role of saliva in chemical digestion. Students’ second postcards relate to the food’s journey through the esophagus. Students should describe how the body keeps food from entering the windpipe and how mucus and peristalsis help to move the food through the esophagus. The third postcards cover the stomach and should describe both mechanical digestion by the contraction of muscles and chemical digestion by digestive juices. The fourth postcards feature the small intestine. For these cards, students should describe the chemical digestion that occurs as a result of the enzymes and secretions of the small intestine, liver, and pancreas. They also should discuss how nutrients are absorbed through villi. The final postcards come from the large intestine. Students should mention the bacteria that feed on the material passing through the large intestine. They also should note that water is absorbed into the bloodstream and that the rest of the material is eliminated. Throughout the postcard creation process, students should try to include as much information about the digestive system on their postcards as they can.

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