What excretory system activity do you want to try in your classroom?
What is the purpose of the excretory system? How does the excretory system work? Well, it excretes wastes from our body and maintains the number of fluids and salts in our body. Pretty important, right? These are the kinds of things that our students need to know. I absolutely LOVE teaching about the human body systems. We just get to talk about the amazing things our body does on a daily basis without us even thinking about it. It’s important to know how our body works because we have to take steps to keep it working properly.
What about the excretory system vs urinary system? Many people use the name urinary system and excretory system synonymously. However, although the urinary system is a major part of the excretory system, there are other systems involved with releasing wastes as well.
In this post, I will share some WOW factor ideas for your middle school science classroom that you can do with your students to teach them all about the excretory system and more!
What’s the Excretory System? – Helping Students WONDER
As I’ve mentioned several times before, I absolutely LOVE teaching about the human body systems. However, not all students are as excited about them as I am, so that’s where you have to do something to hook them in and make them want to learn more. Here are 3 different ideas that you can try. You can choose to do one, or you can do more!
Post-it Discussion – What is Waste?
One of my favorite things to use in the classroom is post-its. Teachers love them. Students love them. They are fabulous! So, what can you do with these post-its? You can use them to spark discussion in your classroom. Here’s what you do:
- Give each student in your class one beautiful post-it.
- Ask your students to write down the answer to this question, “In regard to your body, what is waste?”
- Once they finish, they can bring the post-it note to a particular place at the front of the room.
- Once all students have completed the post-it and put it in the designated spot, choose a student to read off some of the answers. This can get a little silly, so maybe choose a more mature student.
- As a class, see if you can pick out any patterns.
Students may realize that waste includes “pee and poop” and such, but they may not think of the other wastes that your body rids of such as carbon dioxide, water, salts, etc.
If they haven’t thought of this…don’t tell them yet. Tell them that there are MORE and get them to WONDER. They’ll be excited to learn more during the lesson. They’ll be able to answer the question, What does the excretory system do?”.
Life-Size Model
If you have never had your students create a life-size model of a human body system, it is so much fun!
For this one, I think you should do something a little different besides just the excretory system. Have your students draw the excretory system and the digestive system! Why? They work closely together and are best known for releasing wastes from the body.
You’ll need:
- large pieces of bulletin board paper
- textbooks, diagrams, or computers for students to research the parts of these systems
- crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.
- your students!
- space
When I did this, I was able to move the students around the classroom and make enough room. Depending on your class size, you may need to take it to the hallway.
Your students can work in groups, trace to outline of one of their bodies on the huge piece of paper. Then, they will draw out the digestive and excretory systems.
After, display them and have a discussion about why you only drew these two systems. Could you have drawn more? Why? You can talk more about wastes here if you’d like.
Excretory System Writing Prompt
Here’s a chance for your students to get their wheels turning while incorporating more writing into your classroom. Try a writing prompt!
You can have your students answer the question:
“What would happen if your body didn’t get rid of the things it didn’t need?”
If it pains you to make your students sit down quietly and write in science class, here’s a way to spice things up.
- Put your students in groups of four.
- Tell your students that they will be working together to write about this prompt.
- Give your students the prompt and have the first student write the first sentence.
- That student will pass it to the second student, and they will write the second sentence.
- Do the same thing for student 3 and student 4.
- Continue going around the group until the question is answered and all requirements have been met!
This is a fun way to do a writing assignment, and it also adds another challenge of working together!
What System Does the Excretory System Work With? – Digestive System and Excretory System Interactive Lesson
As mentioned before, the digestive system and the excretory system are so closely tied together because they both rid of waste, and I think it’s important to make some of these connections, and that’s why I created this digestive system and excretory system interactive lesson.
Interactive lessons are special and designed with research-based strategies to engage students while helping them to remember the content. These researched-based strategies include chunking information, highlighting important information, taking out unnecessary information, and more! These strategies help reduce student cognitive load.
What are the main parts of the excretory system? What does the excretory system interact with? What does the excretory system remove? What are the main parts of the digestive system? What is the main organ of the excretory system? These are just some of the questions that this digestive and excretory systems lesson covers.
Students will learn about the digestive and excretory structures and functions, the difference between them, what organs are in the excretory system: the skin, lungs, liver, urinary system, large intestines, how all systems work together, and more.
The embedded activities include answering questions in the text box, drag-and-drop activities, anticipation guide, Venn diagram, and more!
You can find this in the shop.
You can also find this on TPT.
What Excretory System Activity Will You Choose to Widen Student Knowledge?
There are so many different things you can do to widen student knowledge about the excretory system. There are a crazy number of things to explore. Here are 3 different ideas. Skip the excretory system worksheets and choose one or two of these to do!
Kidney Model
The kidney is one of the major organs of the excretory system. They filter the blood to form urine. This may be something that could be difficult for students to grasp, so why not have them to create a model.
You can have them to research, set parameters, and create their own (STEM) using different materials, or you can use some of the ideas online.
If you are looking for a working model, this video shows step-by-step the things that you can do to create one. The materials needed are fairly cheap and easy to find like cardboard, water bottles, and tubing. You can also do something simple with beakers, “waste liquids”, and a coffee filter. This video shows a great example.
There are a lot of ideas online!
Investigating Blood Sugar
Another way to investigate the excretory system further is to investigate blood sugar. The kidneys play a huge role in filtering the blood and balancing the amount of sugar in the blood. Showing is better than telling, so I suggest you check out this resource by PBS Learning Media where students can compete this fun lab to learn more about how this works and about diabetes, a condition than many people deal with.
RAFT
Another thing that I love to do to incorporate writing in the classroom is to have students complete a RAFT. They are so much fun!
A RAFT is a writing assignment where students write in a certain point of view to a certain audience in a certain format about a certain topic. What?
Let me explain using the letters of R-A-F-T
R: The role: the point of view of the writer
A: The audience: the audience of the writing piece
F: how it is written
T: topic of the writing piece
Here’s an idea that you can use as a RAFT assignment for the excretory system!
- R: You are the organs of the excretory system.
- A: You are writing to the digestive system organs.
- F: You are writing a three-paragraph letter.
- T: You are telling the organs of the digestive system how they need to work in order for you to do your job.
You can make up your own. You can even have the students make up their own! I love to do these in the classroom because students can be so funny and creative.
So, did you decide what excretory system activity you’ll choose?
Help your students master science content!
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