What happens to the FOOD we eat?

This week, we explored the body system in charge of the food for our body - Digestive System. At the beginning of the unit, when the Grade 1s were asked to show what they know about the journey of food inside the body, they were all focused on the final output 😅 Then when we explored it this week, they looked into the tedious process of how the food we eat is digested carefully and rigidly to ensure that nutrients will be delivered to and absorbed by the body. First we looked at the parts of the digestive system - mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, pancreas and liver. They were able to arrange the parts correctly and also explain the steps the food undergoes from mouth to the large intestine. To be able to visualize how food looks like in every step, we did a simple experiment in the classroom. They showed how food looks like when it is in the mouth, in the stomach, in the small intestine and large intestine. We used bread, banana, water (as saliva) and acetic acid (vinegar) to represent stomach acids. During the process, various comments were heard: "Eew, gross!" "I don't like the smell. Can I use mask?" "It is so mushy!" It was really funny to hear them say those things. 'Just imagine, this is happening inside our body. Isn't it wonderful and awesome to know that this process is well-taken cared of by our digestive system? That we don't have to worry about the smell and the mushy-ness.

FINDING OUT what we KNOW

This week, we worked on unpacking terms from our central idea: balanced, lifestyle, enables, responsible choices. Everytime they do something, they are asked to reflect on it and check if it was a responsible choice or not. To remind them of it, the sentence 'Let us make responsible choices." is written on the Unit Wall. We posted some teacher-intiated questions. The students worked in pairs and answered the questions using their prior knowledge. Here are what they put together:

They also came up with questions and wonderings they would like to include in our exploration:

We began our finding out with understanding the main body system in charge of feeding our body with energy we need, the Digestive System.

We will review the parts of the Digestive system and the journey of food at the beginning of next week through an assessment activity that they would do in teams.