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Fifth Graders Not Only Learn Body’s Digestive System, They Act It Out, Too!

The second semester science curriculum in fifth grade focuses on biology, “looking at the different systems that multicellular organisms use,” says teacher Eitam Kohen. To begin the semester, students are focused on learning about the human body and will then move on to plant systems afterwards. Last week fifth graders took a deep-dive into the digestive system, not only learning each of the parts of the body involved in the process of digesting food, but acting out the path food takes when it enters a human’s mouth. “We are the mouth, and we chew up the food so it’s easier for the stomach to eat,” said the two students representing the mouth. “We are the esophagus and we take a bolus from the mouth—a bolus is a wad of food—and we bring it to the stomach,” said the students representing the esophagus. On the reenactment went, from mouth to anus, with a side trip of red blood cells to a part of the body and then to the kidneys.
 
“This lesson not only teaches students about the human body, but we also spent a little time thinking about how we function as human beings and stopped to appreciate that.” MORE PHOTOS
 
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