Grade 5 Human Systems

Human Body Systems Project

Imagine you are born without the ability to see, or you are in an accident and lose your hearing. Maybe you lose the ability to breathe with both lungs because of cancer, or contract a disease that affects your digestive abilities. Perhaps your arm or leg is amputated and you must find a new way to perform tasks that were once very intuitive.

1. Choose a body system or a sense and explain how it is missing or damaged. 

2. Create a presentation, video, invention, or creation to cope or compensate with the missing or damaged body system. 

Your project must include at least one page of writing and two approved references. There is an excellent section in the library on the systems of the body under 600. Your writing must include an explanation of how the body system you are focusing on functions.

Some project Ideas

• Create a podcast telling the story of how a blind child perceives the world and navigates it. 

• Design a prosthetic arm out of LEGO and write about how it help a person missing an arm

• Create a video animation showing how a person with asthma breathes

• Create a working model to show how lungs are damaged because of smoking

• Make a website that shows how a hearing aid helps a person who is hard of hearing

• Write a song about how a person who can’t taste salty foods taste. 

• Make a poster showing how a heart attack would affect a person

• Make a slideshow showing how an eating disorder can affect a person.

Exemplars

Project checklist:

1. You have a "green light": You have cleared your project topic, presentation format, and sources with me.

2. You describe a body system and its functions

3. You describe the damage, disability, or disease to the system

4. You describe how an individual might cope or live without the system

5. You have a full page of writing minimum

6. You have a creative presentation with sources