Who We Are - The Human Body

Unit of Inquiry: Who We Are

An inquiry into the nature of the self; beliefs and values; personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health; human relationships including families, friends, communities, and cultures rights and responsibilities; what it means to be human.

Central Idea:
The human body is a complex machine dependent upon its systems and needs to be taken care of.

Lines of Inquiry:

• The body’s systems-respiratory, cardiovascular, skeletal and muscular
• The interdependence of system.
• Caring for the body

Discovering and understanding the central idea. A very important part of the initial learning is to understand the meaning of the central idea. Together as a group we pieced together a puzzle of the central idea and discussed the meaning of the main words  <complex> <machine> <dependent> <systems>. Please talk with your child about the central idea and ask them to explain it to you.

Making decisions about the placement
of the puzzle pieces.

Reading the central idea and highlighting
the main words.

Our first activity involved finding out what we already
know about the body's systems.
We are drawing around Alex's body and
thinking about our prior knowledge.

The Human Body : Recording our knowledge and thinking.

Independent work. Drawing and labelling
what we know about the body.
This is the first assessment piece.

Using resources to help with the drawing.

Independent work allows the teacher to assess
and check individual children's understanding.

Every child's work is different and it
demonstrates their own learning.

Next step in our journey of understanding the body systems: Learning about the brain.

Another puzzle challenge to help us work
collaboratively together.
Our goal is to make sure everyone in our class is actively participating.

Piecing together the parts of the brain and
 beginning our journey of learning about this important body system.

Viewing images and listening to scientific videos
are important ways to gain new information and knowledge.

Reading information from books is another important way to gain
new information. Recording new information on the mind map allows
our brains to remember this new knowledge.

We are a learning community as we work together to build the
mind map of our understanding.

Reflecting, thinking and discussing our learning.

Please ask your child to explain to you about what they know about the brain and how it works.

The students will now work independently and build a mind map of their own thinking and learning about the brain. As a teacher, this allows me to observe each individual and assess where they are at in their learing. These are some aspects I observe, record and assess: 

• ability to work independently.
• knowledge gained from the class learning.
• understanding of the important components of a mind map.
• presentation of drawings and handwriting.