Introduction: Our Digestive System

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During COVID19, teachers had to face new challenges including performing new methods of teaching and teaching online. We faced the same challenges in our club, this is why we had this workshop. We wanted to help our children in their science subject and to tell our teachers that we can teach science online in a fun online environment. We explored the digestive system but you can adopt this to any subject.

We sent all the equipments to our children with some gifts to celebrate new school year, including a story book, a pencil, a ruler, a CoderDojo sticker and a sharpener. They all were packed safely in a sanitised bag.

Supplies

  • Makey Makey (If this is not applicable, you can use the virtual MM)
  • Modelling Clay
  • Laminated digestive system digram (lamination is optional)
  • Scratch

Step 1: Modelling

Print the digestive system sheet (black and white), and do lamination. Lamination is optional but I did it to keep using the sheet over and over.

Using the modelling clay, shape your digestive system. I gave the choice of colours to the children.

While doing the modelling, we did small talk about each part and its function and how to protect our system especially with the COVID pandemic.

Step 2: Scratch

Now we are going to model our system in scratch, I made a starter project you can use. In this project you will have the organs as sprites. For each sprite we are going to add the following code

  1. Add code that will make the sprite disappear at the start of the project:
    • When flag Clicked
    • hide
  2. Add the Makey Makey extension
  3. Map each sprite to a key in your Makey Makey, example: for liver we are using the up arrow, so our code will be:
    • When up arrow key pressed
    • show (because we make it hidden in step 1)
    • start sound (In this step we can ask the children to record what they know about this organ, I have an instructable on how to record voice in Scratch).
    • say "I am a liver" or any message of your choice

If you don't have a Makey Makey hardware, you can use the virtual MM in Scratch developed by Colleen Graves.

Step 3: Final Project

You can find the final Scratch project here, the sprites and the sounds are in Arabic but you can change it to your language.

I hope you like this project and you enjoy it with your students.