If you were to bring up anything that is talking about your digestive, respiratory, or circulatory systems I would have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. Through our body systems project, I have really learned more about the body, what is happening inside of us, and how they are all connected to each other.

 

For science, we use foldables that we glue into our science workbooks so that we can have resources for the content we are learning. One of the foldables we did for the digestive system is accordion style and has all of the major organs and what they do for the digestive system. They are also all in order of when they occur. The sections that helped me the most are the sections for stomach and small intestine because they were the most confusing to me. In the stomach, proteins are being broken down chemically from the stomach juices (Hydrochloric acid and Pepsin). The muscles in the walls of your stomach are also churning all the food and juices around in your stomach into a mixture of broken down food and stomach juices, called chyme. Not many things are happening in the stomach but I would still get confused on whether the actions were occurring in the stomach or another part of the digestive system. In the small intestine, multiple things are happening. This is where the fat begins to break down after bile from your liver coats it and breaks it down into smaller pieces. Bile is like your body’s soap. This is also where carbohydrates and proteins finish breaking down. The last thing that happens is all of the food molecules are absorbed by your villi. Villi are small things that stick out of the side of your intestine so they can absorb as much food molecules as possible. This foldable really helped me to keep the steps organized and to know all of the information for each step, all in one place.

 

A foldable that we did for the respiratory system really helped me to understand better what is happening. For me, the respiratory system was a lot more confusing and hard to understand what was going on. This system had more new terms that I had not heard of or did not know what they were. For example, I had no idea what a trachea was or what it did. This was one of the first steps for the respiratory system. This foldable explained that a trachea was just a passageway for inhaled and exhaled air and I thought that it was like this super complex thing that did complicated stuff. There were also words like alveoli which sounds a little like villi. So when I heard alveoli I would confuse it with villi and they did two different things. Alveoli are sacks that fill up with air and villi are things that stick out of the small intestine to absorb nutrients.

 

What really helped the most with understanding the different organs, would be our final model. We had to include all three systems in our model. In the model we had to include what each part does, how and why your body is using the food in these systems, and where the three systems are connected. In the model, was when I really had to understand the content to be able to have accurate information. This was when the information learned was actually used.  Previously, I talked about not knowing what a trachea was and how the foldable helped me. You can see on our model where it says “air travels down your trachea” that we had finally figured out that it was just a passageway for the air to travel down after you inhale it. Another thing I wasn’t really understanding were if things were happening in the stomach or small intestine like where is the bile going into? Where are food molecules being absorbed? You can see on two purple pieces of paper we talk about the stomach and small intestine. It is clearly stated that bile is coating fat molecules in your small intestine and then that is also where food molecules are being absorbed, not in the stomach. The stomach is just where the food is being broken down more by the muscular walls and where the broken up food mixes with the stomach juices.

 

The foldables really helped me because If wasn’t understanding what organ is doing what, I could look back in my book and read about each one. The model helped me because I then had to actually use the information to make an accurate representation of all three systems. In the model you can also see all of the different things that we learned in the different systems by reading each section of information our model.