Layered Curriculum Unit: Digestion (4th grade)

By Angela Kanerva & Katie Golin

Pinckney Elementary School

C Layer
1. What Happens to the Food you eat?: Worksheet
2. The Stomach: Read & Answer questions. Oral quiz.
3. Taking care of your teeth: In class Dental Office Visit Presentation
4. The Human Body Corporation: Writing paper modeled in class.
5. The Great Food Journey: Writing paper modeled in class.
6. Pyramid Explorations Readers Theater: Read along with the class **and answer questions in booklet.
7. Mouth full of teeth: We'll talk about the various kinds of teeth and **how we use them.
8. Incredible Journey: Worksheet
9. Digestion Poster: Color and assemble a 2-D model of the Digestive **System. There are 2 choices available for you to choose, just pick one.
10. Digestion Words: Make flashcards for the following words: Teeth, ***Tongue, Esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, *anus, liver, kidneys, pancreas and gall bladder. Oral quiz.
11. Digestion Quiz Information: The digestion quiz will cover the following **information:
**All of the Digestion words from #10 above,
**Label the parts of the Food Pyramid,
**Know that Mechanical Digestion involves the teeth and muscles & ***Chemical Digestion involves stomach acid and saliva.
**Label the parts of the tooth.
**Name five foods for a balanced meal & what food group they are in.

B Layer
1. Make a Triangular Pyramid using magazine pictures. Get the puzzle pieces and model from class to make your model from.
2. Build a 3-D Model of the digestive system labeling all parts from the Digestion Words in the C Layer. Use whatever supplies you find and have a good time!
3. Tongue Map: In Class lab about your taste buds.
4. Good Health Presentation: Mr. Mortensen, Mr. Carlson, Mrs. Golin and Mrs. Kanerva all team teach this great lesson on your growing and changing human body.

A Layer
1. The Doctor of Digestion is Dr. William Beaumont. He has an office for exhibit that will be part of our Mackinaw Trip Scavenger Hunt. After reading about this famous Doctor, prepare a presentation on why Dr. Beaumont was controversial. Was it right or wrong for him to leave Mr. St. Martin open and do experiments on him? What problems were there or could there have been? Would someone be able to do experiments like this today?
2. Are medications good or bad for the human body, especially the digestive track? Find out which medications have been developed specifically for a particular part of the digestive track and how they help or hinder that body part. Would you like to be a researcher who creates new medicines? What would be the pros and cons of being a research scientist?