Do you love teaching about the circulatory and respiratory systems? I absolutely LOVE teaching the human body systems. I love teaching about every single one of them! Why? First of all, biology is my jam! I have always loved it. What else? Well, who doesn’t like talking about themselves? Just kidding…kind of! It is a lot of fun talking about something that completely relates to both you and every other person in the room.
The whole reason you are alive is because your body systems are working together to make it happen. Two of the most arguably important body systems are the circulatory system and the respiratory system which work together to keep oxygen flowing throughout your body, making sure that you stay alive.
Although this is one of my favorite topics to teach, it is not always my students’ favorite. Some love it, while others just comply; however, I’ve learned some tips and tricks along the way to ensure that students get just as excited as I am on the subject, and I’d love to share some with you today so that you can share this love of learning about these systems with your students.
In this post, I will first share some ideas with you on how to get your students hyped up and internally motivated to learn more about the circulatory and respiratory systems. Then, I will share how you can relay all of the vocabulary and important details about these systems to your middle school students without information overload. Finally, I will share how you can widen student knowledge on the subject so that they can learn as much as possible before moving on.
Help Students WONDER – Relationship Between Circulatory and Respiratory System
As mentioned, even if you love a topic dearly, your students may not be as excited as you are on the subject. That’s why it is important to help them WONDER. If you accomplish this, your students will be eager to learn more on their own about how the circulatory system and respiratory system work together. There are a lot of ways to hype up your students, and I will share 3 of those things with you in this section. You can choose to do just one, or you can do multiple! I love these circulatory system classroom activities and respiratory classroom activities!
Circulatory and Respiratory Systems Lab – Heart Rate
This is one of my favorite labs that I make sure that I do each year! It brings so much real-life application and important concepts into the picture. This is a very simple lab that you can do with your students. In addition, you can also add more to it!
Here’s the simple instructions:
- First, teach your students how to find their pulse. This is tricky for some.
- Once they find their pulse, time them for 15 seconds and have them to count. Have them to multiply this number by 4 and then record. This is their resting heart rate. You can do this multiple times to get a more accurate average.
- Then, have your students walk around the room for a minute or two. Immediately, time them for 15 seconds and have them to check their pulse. Once again, multiply this number by 4 and record.
- Next, have your students do jumping jacks or run in place. After, have them to count their pulse while you time them for 15 seconds. Multiply the number by 4 and record.
- After about a minute or two, have your students record their pulse once more.
Once this is finished, have them to share their results with the class. If time allows, find class averages.
Discuss the results and why they think their heart rate did what it did. Why did their heart rate increase after exercise? Did their heart rate return to normal after a while? How long did it take?
There are so many things you can do with this lab, and it’s so much fun!
Guest Speakers
Guest speakers are great in the classroom at any time, but they are wonderful before you dive into the content. This gives students a great introduction to the topic you are about to teach about while filling their heart with WONDER and wanting to learn more.
Some great speakers for this topic are doctors and specialist such as respiratory therapists and cardiologists.
These speakers can come talk to your middle school students about their career and be able to answer any questions that your students may have. In addition, they will be able to explain some of the content to your students before you, as the teacher, dive into it.
How do you find a guest speakers? Well, guests such as these can normally be found locally. Maybe you yourself visit one of these doctors!
If you are unable to book a speaker, you can always pull up a variety of YouTube videos to share with your students.
In addition, you can check out Skype a Scientist.
**Be sure to get questions from your students beforehand. This makes the process smoother. Plus, you won’t have any surprise middle school questions!
Heart and Lung Models
As with a guest speaker, models are great to create after you teach a lesson, but they are also great to do at the beginning of a lesson. If students have a visual that they have created beforehand, the concepts and vocabulary will sink in better!
There are a lot of models that you can create for the circulatory and respiratory systems. You can choose to do this as a demonstration, or you can allow your students to work in groups.
- Heart Model:
This model heart by Wise Wonders is easy to create and is a nice representation of the atrium and ventricles in the heart and how the heart is pumped to the body.
There are more complicated models you can choose, but this is simple and can be very effective!
- Lung Model:
You can also create a lung model. This model lung by Science Buddies is a great example. I particularly love these types of models because you can see how the diaphragm plays an important role in breathing.
After completing both models with your class. Have a discussion about how these two systems may work together and how the circulatory and respiratory system are connected. It will be great to learn more about their prior knowledge and the connections that they’ve already made!
Not Your Average Circulatory and Respiratory Systems Notes
Now that your students are excited about learning circulatory and respiratory system links, it’s now time to dive into some more concepts and vocabulary.
Interactive lessons are great for reducing students cognitive load and helping students to remember content and keep it in their long-term memory. They use the 7 steps to helping students retain information.
This Circulatory and Respiratory System Interactive Lesson is no different! This lesson dives into the difference between the circulatory and respiratory system but focuses on the connection between the two.
It also explores the components and functions of each system.
Not only does this resource provide a wonderful lesson, there are embedded activities included to help students process the information one piece at a time, reducing cognitive load.
These activities include answer questions, drag-and-drop practice, KWL, Venn diagram, and more!
This resource can also be found on TPT.
Circulatory and Respiratory Systems Connected – Widen Student Knowledge
Make a Movie
This activity can be a BLAST, and really doesn’t take as much work on your part, except to facilitate and make sure that your class works well together.
So, what do you do? You must assign each student in your class a part of the circulatory or respiratory system.
Examples include:
- Arteries
- Capillaries
- Veins
- Heart
- Lung
- Diaphragm
- Carbon dioxide
- Oxygen
- Nose
- Etc.
You can assign based on the number of students in your class. Task your students to create a human model of these systems and create a movie to represent oxygen being moved throughout the body and carbon dioxide being exhaled.
They may find bumps along the way:
- Are they missing an important body part?
- Where does the oxygen need to travel?
- What is the most important artery?
Give students some time and allow them to research. You’ll be amazed at what movie they will create! Don’t forget to assign a camera person! You may need a narrator as well.
Disease Research Project
Another great real-life application (as if this whole lesson isn’t real-life, but anyways!) is to research common diseases and disorders that occur within the circulatory and respiratory systems.
You can allow students to work individually, in partners, or in groups for their research on diseases of the circulatory and respiratory system.
In addition, you can give them choice in their presentations. They can create a brochure, a presentation, a skit, or another form of presentation to share about their chosen disease or disorder.
Here are some options for students to explore:
- Atherosclerosis
- Hypertension
- Heart Attack
- Stroke
- Abdominal Aortic Aneurism
- Peripheral Artery Disease
- Asthma
- Pneumonia
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
- Pulmonary Embolism
- Interstitial Lung Disease
- Pulmonary Edema
There are a lot more, but these are so of the common ones.
Circulatory and Respiratory System RAFT
If you have never done a RAFT assignment in your classroom, you are missing out! These are so fun! So, what is it? It is a way that you can bring writing into your science classroom with a fun twist. It’s basically a prompt for students.
R is the role of the author. What perspective are you writing from?
A is the audience. Who are you writing to?
F is the format. Is it a letter, essay, narrative…
T is the topic. What is the topic of the writing piece?
So, you can make a RAFT assignment to discuss these systems, but one of the most important things to talk about when teaching this topic is the relationship between them and how circulatory and respiratory systems maintain homeostasis by working together.
Here is a fun suggestion.
- R: The Heart
- A: Oxygen
- F: A Letter
- T: Currently, the human body that the heart is located in is about to play a game of basketball. The heart’s job is to write a letter to the oxygen that will enter the body to tell it where it needs to go and travel.
You can add these to your circulatory system classroom activities, your respiratory classroom activities, or both!
Help your students master science content!
[…] Circulatory and Respiratory Systems […]