Looking for some digestive system lesson ideas? When I tell you that I LOVE teaching about the human body systems, I mean it. Biology is my all-time favorite subject. Luckily, I have been able to teach the body systems all of my teaching years. It’s my absolute favorite.
It’s also fun to teach it to middle school students. They just love to learn about themselves, and why not? Their bodies are changing at such a wild pace. They need to know what’s going on!
In this post, I share some WONDER strategies you can use before teaching the digestive system. Then, I share a lesson that discusses the digestive system, but also the excretory system, because they are so closely related. Finally, I share some WIDEN activities for your students to do to help them learn even more about this body system and go above and beyond in learning!
WONDER Strategies to Add to Your Digestive System Lesson Plan
WONDER strategies are those activities that introduce students to a topic and get them excited about learning. It can be a pre-assessment activity, a phenomenon to observe, an inquiry activity, or just something fun to get them hyped up about what they are going to learn.
Here are three different activities that you can choose from to do with your students! Which one will you add to the digestive system lesson plan you’re working on?
Outside Chalk Life-Size Model Drawing
If you have been reading my posts or have been following me on Instagram for any time, you should know that I am a believer in taking students outside whenever you can, especially on those beautiful days when you could just stay outside all day long!
If one of those beautiful days occurs around the time you are about to teach the digestive system, take your kiddos outside for a fun pre-assessment drawing.
You may have heard of the “life-size” drawings where you get a huge piece of bulletin board paper, and students trace one of their classmates, and they make a life-size model of a body system by drawing and labeling the parts inside. This is usually done as a lesson or lesson review.
This time, you are going to do the same thing, but use chalk outside, and students may have NO idea what the digestive system consists of. It will be fun to do before the digestive system lesson.
So, what do you do?
- Put your students in groups of 3-4.
- Gather some chalk and take your students outside to an area of concrete or pavement.
- In student groups, have the students trace the outline of one of their classmates. Yes, they’ll have to lay on the ground. They are kids. It’s fun. It’s ok. You can tell them the day before to wear some clothes they can get dirty.
- Once students have the outline traced, have them to draw what they think the digestive system may look like, and label the parts. Most of them will know stomach, and they may know even more depending on if they’ve learned about it in a previous grade level.
- After all of the groups are finished with their prediction drawing, give them a chance to look at the rest of the class drawings and compare it to their own.
- If time allows, go back inside, and have a discussion about the activity.
You’ll be amazed at what they already know!
Digestion in a Bag
One of my favorite ways to introduce the digestive system is to do the “bread in a bag activity”. It’s really easy and cheap to do, but it goes a long way in helping students understand the difference between mechanical and chemical digestion before diving into the lesson on digestive system.
You’ll need zip-lock bags, bread or crackers, and some type of acidic juice like orange juice.
The zip-lock bag represents some organs in the digestive system, like the stomach.
The bread or crackers represents FOOD!
The acidic juice represents the acidic digestive juices in the human body.
- Give each student a zip-lock bag and a half piece of bread or a cracker.
- Tell students to tear the food into smaller pieces and place it in the bag. Ask students what this represents. It represents mechanical digestion (ex: chewing and peristalsis).
- Go around and pour a small amount of juice into your students’ bags. Ask them what it represents. It represents chemical digestion (ex. stomach acids and other digestive juices).
- Tell students to squish the food with their fingers until all of the pieces are tiny. Ask students what this represents. It represents mechanical digestion (Ex. Food is squeezed in the stomach).
There is more that you can do, but we are stopping here. Why? You want your students to wonder what happens next! They will be curious to dive into the lesson!
Here’s a great visual to see this in action. It also gives some more steps if you want to take this inquiry activity further!
It makes a great digestive system inquiry lesson.
Magic School Bus
As with the case of all science teachers my age, one of my favorite things to watch growing up was The Magic School Bus!
Unfortunately, I can’t remember all of the episodes I watched, but one of them that I remember being SO fascinated with was the one about taking a field trip inside of Arnold’s digestive system! It’s Season 1, Episode 2, titled “For Lunch”.
Don’t let your middle school students fool you. They love The Magic School Bus too!
This is surely a way to get them excited about learning more about the digestive system. It will help them make a connection with the excretory system as well.
Digestive and Excretory System Lesson
Interactive lessons are great tools to use for teaching. They also are great for review, science centers, and more!
Interactive lessons are great because they take science content and break it down into digestible pieces. Within these pieces are interactive activities that students can participate in. When doing this, they are able to process the information before moving on. This helps reduce student cognitive load and helps them to remember information long-term.
I like to teach the digestive system and the excretory system simultaneously. Why? Number 1, they are so closely related because they involve removing waste, and in fact, the digestive system is a part of the excretory system. The excretory system removes waste, and the digestive system removes solid waste. Another reason is that it helps to save time. There are a lot of body systems to cover!
This digestive system and excretory system interactive lesson covers the digestive and excretory systems and functions. It discusses the digestion process and teaches how the excretory system excretes wastes (including the urinary system)!
The embedded activities to help students process information include text box questions, drag-and-drop activities, an anticipation guide, Venn diagram, creating your own digestion story, and more!
It’s so much fun! This is the digestive system lesson to go with!
Digestive System Lesson Activities to WIDEN Knowledge
What about widening student knowledge. Here are some fun activities to do add to your digestive system lesson!
Exploring Lengths of the Digestive System
How do digestive system lengths compare? It always blows students’ minds when they find out own long some of the organs in the digestive system are, like the small intestine and the large intestine. It’s also neat when they discover the small intestine is longer than the large intestine! It makes for a great conversation.
So, here is a great class activity! You’ll want to separate your students into different groups, probably 3-4 students depending on your class size. In this activity, they will model how long the digestive system organs are with yarn.
You’ll need:
- colored yarn (different colors to represent different digestive organs
- scissors
- construction paper or cardboard
- colored pencils or markers
- tape
- a designated space to hang the class creation, such as the school hallway
- Give each group an organ that they will be focusing on. The options are mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, and anus. You can choose to do all of these, or just pick a few to assign.
- Explain the activity to your students. Tell them that they will be working together to accurately represent the length of their organ. You can even assign them group roles!
- Have students to research the average lengths of their digestive organ.
- Students will work together to cut the yarn into a piece that represents the length of their organ. The group assigned the small intestine will have a piece of yarn that is around 20 feet long!
- Once they have finished this, they will need to create a sign (something that’s less than 12 x 12 inches), that they can use to label their organ when it is displayed in the hallway or space designated.
- Students will go to the designated area to hang their yarn models. Make sure they are in the correct order. For example, the mouth will be on top, then the esophagus, etc.
Students will get a great visual, and the rest of the school will too if you choose to place it in the hallway.
Digestive System Model
Remember the digestion in a bag from earlier in the post? Now that students have learned so much more, you can take this model a step further. This time, you can demonstrate to students how it goes from food all the way to waste! It will make more sense to them now.
It’s a fun digestive system lab activity! There’s a lot more you can do here, so you can just do it as a demonstration.
Here is a video that explains all of the steps. She does a great job!
Relationship Between the Digestive System and the Excretory System
As mentioned, it’s great to teach the digestive system and the excretory system together.
Here are some activities you can do to incorporate the excretory system in your WIDEN activities!
What will you add to your human digestive system lesson plan?
Help your students master science content!
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