Teaching About the Human Body

Submitted by Julie McKinney on Thu, 05/29/2014 - 11:23
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Hi Everyone,

Often the first step in addressing health literacy is to offer some basic instruction about the human body. This is something that has been found lacking in K-12 instruction for those born in the US. And the vocabulary--at least-- is something that needs work for English language learners. So I would like to know if you have suggestions about websites or other materials that you have found useful for this.

With the continuing gains in access to the internet, there are so many more opportunities to teach anatomy by using photos, graphics and animation!

Please share what you like, and let's make a list that we can have ready for teachers to use!

Julie

Comments

Hi Everyone,

Based on the # of views, it sounds like this is a big topic! So I will get together a list of resources and post them on Monday. Please share any that you have, but I promise I will get you a decent list. (Just don't have time today!)

Julie

Hi Everyone,

Sorry--I am a week late, but I do want to share these resources for teaching about the human body that are appropriate for adult learners. I had a harder time than I thought to find good resources for teaching basic anatomy at the level needed for adult literacy learners and ELLs. Most of the health literacy curricula and lessons I have do not start with basic body parts, so some of these are focused on organs, like the lungs or heart. But I know there are more good resources out there...

Please help me find more!

Here's what I have so far:

This is the best one I found for teaching about the body overall. This excellent curriculum begins with a lesson on Parts of the Body, followed by Describing Ailments and Symptoms. There are pictures, activities, handouts and audio files. There are Beginner Level and an Intermediate Level versions.

KidsHealth is a great health information website that has information geared specifically toward kids, teens and parents.

This section has short animations, which explain how the basic body parts and organs work. There are also quizzes, articles and other tools, like word search puzzles. These are geared toward kids, so the language and style reflect that, but it does make it entertaining!

From Air Info Now. This is a self-paced animation showing how lungs work. It’s interactive and easy to follow and the language is very simple. You can also choose to see what happens with certain pollutants in the air, like ozone or carbon monoxide.

From The Science Museum of Minnesota. This site has diagrams, facts and some lessons to help students understand how the heart and lungs work. The lessons can be adapted for adult learners, and would be useful for math and numeracy practice as well.

I would love to hear from some of you who teach literacy or ESOL. I'm sure there are some great general teaching resources that have sections on body parts that would be great to add to this list!

Thanks so much,

Julie

I just remembered when I was reading Julie's posts about the We Are New York videos that are specifically about health:

New Life Cafe (Diabetes) 
Asthma: The Soap Opera (which my students LOVED, LOVED, LOVED)
No Smoking
Stop Domestic Violence
The Hospital

These all have great workbooks that go with them and are available with first language support for Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.

You can easily download the videos to a flash drive, which even if you have an Internet connection, I would recommend to avoid choppy viewing.  If you look under "Teacher Resources", not only can you find lesson plans ready to go, they actually offer to send you a set of the DVDs for free.

Here's the link: http://www.nyc.gov/html/weareny/html/home/home.shtml

 

Can anybody make suggestions of how to express the importance of personal hygiene?  It seems that we have many students who for one reason or another do not feel that personal hygiene is an important issue.  Oftentimes, we have students who have all of the amenities of home and do not use them.  

Thanks for your input.   

Hi, Shannon.

You are correct. Personal Hygiene is a huge issue. I think that most students would agree that it is important, the bigger issue is that they have different standards than those of the "mainstream" U.S. workplace and community. For example, they may think using strong aftershave or cologne is the way to go, while here in the U.S., vis a vis odors, I think we now go for the absence of odors as preferrable to the strong perfumey scent - at least during the day. Perhaps an activity could be to give the students case studies about individuals looking for work and not exhibiting the correct standards for hygiene and hence not getting the job?  Or not observing correct hygiene on the job, such as spitting in the kitchen sink or standing rather than sitting on toilets (Both of these have happened at worksites I am familiar with.) You could also ask someone you know who speaks the native language or is from the culture of the the person in question and ask that person to explain to him in the native langauge. This is a question of cultural competence that must be addressed.

It's not easy. Other ideas anyone?

Miriam

The best thing I have found that addresses personal hygiene is this: 

Health Action in the U.S.: A Health Education Curriculum for Refugees From Burma.

Here's the PDF: http://www.co.orange.nc.us/health/documents/HealthEducationCurriculumFINAL.pdf 

Look at Unit 2, Lesson 3 on page 31.

This is a very good overall health curriculum that addresses many other important issues related to health and healthcare access. Although it is written for Burmese refugees, there is very little that can't apply to any group of newcomers. It uses a participatory approach and is suitable for lower level ESL classes.