Friday, January 22nd 2016


What are we working on?
In science, students have been learning all about the digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems.  We spent some time learning about all the organs and processes involved in these three systems.  The digestive system helps our body break down food by pulling nutrients out in the small intestine and getting rid of waste.  The circulatory system pumps blood through a series of blood vessels to get essential oxygen and nutrients to our body.  The respiratory system uses a series of organs to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the environment.  As the students found out, these systems - along with others - work together to allow you to be ... you!  

What's coming up?  
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be wrapping up our unit on body systems with a test on the digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems, followed by an overview of the skeletal and muscular system and an investigation into the physical makeup of a chicken wing.  Students will be able to 'dissect' a wing, and track how many body parts we've learned about they can find!

Reminders 
- 3 Current Events are due for all students by Tuesday, January 26th!  (4 more will be due in the third marking period)
- A day students (Atoms Family and Time Travelers) will have a test on the body systems on Monday, February 2nd
- B day students (Beaker Bunch and Little Einsteins) will have a test on the body systems on Friday, January 29th
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Students working hard in class, diving into body systems!

In order to gain a better understanding of how these body systems work, we spent the last few weeks working through stations based on each of them.  Some brave student bloggers volunteered to share some of the cool things we've been up to lately...

Some 5th graders testing out what peristalsis does to food in our stomach!

Catie says:

Dear Parents & Guardians,

I would like to tell you about one of the stations I did in science class. I was doing stations and my favorite station was station 3. Station 3 was a hands on project where we learned on how our digestive system works. What we had to do was we had to partner up and and take vinegar and a funnel, we had to pour the vinegar into 2 bags. Then put 2 crackers in the bags. We also had a timer and every 5, 10, 15 minutes we had to squeeze only one of the bags. But had to leave the other bag alone. Us squeezing the one bag was like our muscles in our stomachs that digest the food. We got to see what worked better and had to compare. I like hands on stations like this because it gets messy and when we poured the vinegar in the bags it got on the floors and tables. What also makes this station awesome is that I got to do it with my best friend. Mr. Morris is the craziest teacher ever. But he makes the stations fun too. That is why station 3 is the craziest and most fun station ever to me.

Tauri says:

It was a fun station because it was an real science experiment. I was a fun experiment because we put two crackers in a bag with vinegar and we switch bag number 1 and we left bag number 2 alone. We switch it every 4 minutes and we learn that if you switch it’s better for use to digest it and that is we digest our food.

Jack says:
During station 3 (Hands-on Digestion) we had to take two crackers, two bags, and fill both bags with vinegar to represent your stomach acid.  The two crackers represented your food getting broken down by the stomach acid (vinegar).  One bag we just used vinegar to break the cracker down.  Bag 2 we used peristalsis but bag 1 we did not have to use peristalsis.  Peristalsis is a wavelike contraction of muscles in the organs of the digestive system.  To represent peristalsis we just squeezed the bag every 4 minutes.  We had to record our data in a table every 4 minutes we squeezed bag 2, and we also had to record the data from bag 1 every four minutes.  This experiment represented how our stomach worked.  At the end of the experiment we discovered that peristalsis broke down the cracker better than no peristalsis.

Nicole says:

We have been learning about  the body systems for a couple of weeks now, and my favorite was station 3. In station 3 we learned about how muscular action breaks down the food in your stomach. How we did it was, we filled two plastic bags with 60 millileters of vinegar and put one cracker in each bag. We then labeled one bag ¨No muscular action¨ than we labeled the other bag ¨Muscular action.¨ After that we waited four minutes, then squeezed the bag that said ¨Muscular action¨ six times. We logged our data and we waited four more minutes then squeezed the bag six more times. After that we did the process one more time. Mr. Morris is a crazy teacher but he always finds a way to make things more fun in the classroom.

Erica is measuring out the vinegar that represented our stomach acid!

Natalie P. and Erica say:
At this station we learned how our muscles action affect the food. We took 2 bags and put a cracker in each bag and poured vinegar. The vinegar represented the stomach acid. Our assignment was to squeeze the second bag to represent Muscle Action and the first bag was to represent ¨No Muscle Action.¨ After every 4 minutes we squeezed the second bag and then recorded what the bags looked like. After 12 minutes we did our last observation. We learned what happens in your stomach. The ¨Muscle Action¨ bag represented the peristaltic movement in your stomach. We also learned that if we didn’t have muscles to grind it up it would be so much harder to live. We both thought the station was definitely gross but really fun! This station was definitely our favorite! We wish we could do it again! _____________________________________________________________

Rachel, Lilly, and Tiffany say:

Our favorite station out of all the six stations was how long is my digestive system (station 4). In this station we used different colored yarn as a substitute for parts of our digestive system, (since we can't use our own!!) It surprised us,  our small intestine was four times bigger than us!  The red yarn was a substitute for our mouth,  The yellow yarn substituted for our esophagus.  The white yarn stood for our stomach, (that was surprisingly small!) Blue yarn stood for the small intestine, (quick fact: the small intestine is larger than the large intestine but the small intestine is thinner than the large intestine.) And last the purple stood for the large intestine. Now for the last step, we measured all of our organs and the total was 402 centimeters!  Overall this station was educational but fun at the same time, and we hope to do more stuff like this!!!

Paige B. says:
I had fun doing this station because I like measuring, and it was a great idea of making a station of how long is your digestive system is. Who wouldn't like to find out that, it was pretty interesting. I learned how long my digestive system was - it was very long. I thought it was very cool and I had fun on this station!!!! I will tell you some of the body parts that we measured to get  how long my digestive system First, the mouth was 22 centimeters, my Esophagus was 16 centimeters, and my stomach was 7 centimeters.  My Small intestine was 998 centimeters and then my large intestine was 158.  Then we got a calculator and added all of the centimeters and I got 1,201.

Hanna says:
One of the stations we did was we used yarn to measure how long our digestive system was. Mr. Morris gave us a google doc and we had to measure from different parts of our body to see how long that part was such as, mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Then, we had to measure all the different colors of yarn in centimeters and add them up. My small intestine was 4 times the size of me for a total of 600 cm alone! My entire digestive system was 809 cm. This station was my favorite because we got to make something, bring it home and see how long my entire digestive system is. How does it all fit in there?  




Hanna measures her digestive system (it goes all the way down the hall!)...  

... while  Dylan begins to plan his out





















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Emma says:
We have been doing stations in Mr. Morris’s science class.  We did stations on cells and now we are doing them on systems like the Digestive,  Respiratory, and Circulatory systems.  I had fun at all the stations but my favorite station was Exercise and Heart rate.  What I did was sat down and took my pulse for fifteen seconds.  Then I had to put it on a data sheet.  Then I had to do jumping jacks and check my pulse and record my data.  Then I had to sit for five minutes rest. I liked that station a lot. My data was before I started everything was 40. After 15 jumping jacks it was 80 BPM.  After 25 jumping jacks it was 128 BPM and after 5 minutes rest  it was 40 BPM.  Exercise makes your heart go faster.

Catherine says:
In Station  5 (How does exercise affect your heart rate?) we learned that if you do more jumping jacks your pulse will raise its speed. That means that your heart rate goes faster and faster. I enjoyed this station because of using a stopwatch and a timer. We had to  take our pulse for 15 seconds and then do 15 jumping jacks. Then, we recorded the number and timed it by 4 to find our BPM, or beats per minute. Next, we did the same thing but did 25 jumping jacks instead.  Our heart beats faster to pump more oxygen into our blood and to our muscles when they work hard. This was a super fun station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Catherine's pie chart showing how exercise affected her heart rate  

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Braden C. says:
I liked station two, Super Organ, because that we got to create our own super hero out of an organ. My super hero was the small intestine. His power was to eat food and digest it and then spit it out at the villains. I think that everyone else liked station two too because it was very creative.  The small intestine kind of works like a big tube that is all scrunched up and it pushes the food down it all the way until it stops.While it does that it squishes the food in it.The small intestine is the part of the gastrointestinal tract between the stomach and the large intestine.The small intestine can bleed. which can be very dangerous.



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If students completed all of the stations early, one of their challenges included making a slide show about a body system we had not learned about in class.  Carly, Gabbie, and Lola found out some great information on the nervous system: 
The Nervous System by Gabbie, Lola, and Carly

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Wrap-up

In addition to the stations written about, the students also practiced finding information using informational texts and videos to compare the functions of our body systems.