I am a currently in my 19th year of teaching, with 8 years served in Massachusetts and the past 11 in Georgia. I work with a wonderful team of 7th grade teachers, and we were trying to find a way to fit the entire theme of structure and function/human body system interactions into the tight 3 week period we are allotted to teach these concepts. We created a unit plan to better teach the Human Body System Interactions. Students are assigned/grouped into small teams of 2-3 students. They then create a museum display for their human body system. Included in their research are requirements for structure and function, interactions with other body systems, a written portion, an interactive portion and disease or disorders of their system. We are entering our second year of completing this project and have tweaked many aspects of the project. It can be adapted for any grade level in which the standards align; most commonly fits NGSS LS MS, Georgia Standards of Excellence or Texas TEKS 7th Grade Life Science, or Human Anatomy and Physiology. All Standards Alignments as well as the Learning Objectives/Learning Targets are attached below. Here is a tour of all physical projects completed by our students: https://youtu.be/GLo6YSrHVrU

Students are also given the option to create a Minecraft world in which they create a display. Here is a link to the completed (some are great, some not so great) Minecraft Worlds students completed: Human Body Systems (padlet.com)

Supplies

This is a list of supplies we send home to parents to donate to the classroom. It is not exhaustive, and many other materials can be incorporated into the students' designs.

Trifold Boards
Shoeboxes
Tissue/Paper Towel Rolls
Modeling Clay
Plastic Bottles (20oz/2liter)
Crafting Supplies
Latex free gloves
Plastic straws
Pipe cleans
Coffee cans
Newspapers/Magazines
Markers/colored pencils
Paint
Paper bags
Liquid glue
Popsicle sticks
Panty hose
Clear tubes
Yarn
Rubber bands
Empty Gallon Bottles

Step 1: Researching Museums and Displays

What is a museum? What makes a good museum display? Students embark on a virtual tour of a museum. There are multiple museum tours available online. While they are exploring, the students are to note what makes a good museum display? How are the displays visually appealing?

Step 2: What Is a Museum Curator?

At this time, students are going to put on their "curator" hats. However, they first need to know what a curator is! You can either find a live guest speaker, a speaker via zoom, or show your students the interview attached in the document.

curator.pdf
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Step 3: Choosing Your System

You will be now teaming up with your classmates to form a curator team. At this time, it is at teacher discretion as to how students will be grouped. You can choose to group students homogeneously, giving more challenging systems (endocrine) to your higher level students and simpler systems (urinary or excretory) to your struggling learners. There is also a survey that you can copy and administer to students to determine their interest: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ShareFormPage.aspx?id=-x3OL5-ROEmquMR_D8kYLZaUznWeJsVLhFZo9jGtn2FUQ0xCRU1QTDc5RVBOOTY3NjZSSE9WNTNTQyQlQCNjPTEu&sharetoken=IHmViTewtBlKB5D3TOT3

Step 4: Planning Your Display

In our school we give students two different options, they can either build a physical display or they can build a display on Minecraft. However, it is imperative that you make it clear to your Minecraft team that they are to create a display, NOT a building that is empty (ask me how I know that this misunderstanding can happen)... Students begin designing their displays on paper first. They are each given a budget of $100, and must plan, diagram and order the supplies needed to build their displays. Attached are the supply order form we utilize, the museum display planning form, as well as supporting documents. Included this year we will do a daily checklist. Our classes are on block schedule, so the tasks are organized to fill 90 minute periods.

Step 5: Building the Museum

During the building of their displays, students adhere to the checklist in Step 4. This project takes our students approximately 2 weeks to complete. When all displays are completed, the entire grade level assembles their displays in a central location (for example, the Media Center/Library/Learning Commons). Then, students participate in a museum experience. They explore the other body systems that they had not researched. As they view each set of displays, they choose two systems to evaluate. They complete the attached form. Also, we have a contest for the "Best of" each exhibit set. Staff and students vote for the best displays and ribbons are awarded (we purchased a bulk set on Amazon)

You can modify this portion of the assignment to allow your students to record information on all body systems, or you can have them fill in a basic structure/function chart for each system.

This was our first year of completing the project: https://youtu.be/GLo6YSrHVrU

Also attached is a Claim, Evidence and Reasoning Template to allow students to construct their final arguments about how the body systems interact to carry out life's processes.