Middle and high school students need a working knowledge of the parts of the human body and how they interact, yet often times science teachers are ill prepared to help students with this content. There are 12 systems of the human body, and for each system, teachers need a slide show and notes, a hands on activity, review activities, and an assessment. For some teachers, the content is overwhelming and the prospect of teaching lists of body parts for students to memorize is daunting. These human body systems resources for middle school are all simple, no prep activities to reinforce the structure and function of the parts of the human body.
The NGSS standard MS-LS1-3 requires that middle school students be able to “Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.” Aside from the levels of organization, this standard asks that students be comfortable with the parts of the human anatomy and how they function together. And on the high school level, HS-LS1-2 asks students to be able to “develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.”
While the structure and function of each of the body systems is best learned independent of each other, the entire organism as a compilation of organ systems is an important first step. Click here to download a free human body systems worksheet!
For each of the individual systems, students need practice. To develop a working knowledge of each of the systems of the human body, Team JustAddH2O has been working hard to ensure that our students have access to materials they need to succeed. Here are the resources we’ve already prepared and the resources we’re working on:
You can see we still have a few holes to patch with a few missing resources. If there’s a resource that’s missing that you’re eager to get on our list, let us know here!