Download The Digestive Process

Costello School, Basingstoke
The Digestive Process
Prior Learning
Precise Learning
Equipment
Safety
Starter
Main
What makes up a healthy diet, role of key nutrients (Protein, fat,
carbohydrate and fibre)
 Digestion is a biological and mechanical process
 The main organs involved in digestion are teeth, mouth,
stomach, small intestine, large intestine and bowels. The liver
(including the gall bladder) provide additives to
 Nutrients are only extracted into the blood in the small intestine
(not in the stomach)
 Watch this video for one way of delivering it
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gY-zXsUYgs )
 Assorted plates of food representing a days worth of food (get
pupils to bring in something the day before perhaps). Foods that
work well include bananas, yogurts, baked potatoes, cereals
 Liquids representing digestive juices: Orange juice (Saliva), water
(stomach acid), green liquid (Bile), small amount of strong coffee
(dead blood cells),
 Washing up bowl
 Large see-through bag (will need to be quite think and
waterproof)
 Optional: food blender
 Potato masher
 Tights (only one leg is needed)
 Scissors
 Lots of newspaper, apron and gloves (this is messy business!)
 Additives and preparation mean that the material is not fit for
consumption
 Prepare a wide area with newspaper for collect and clear any
stray mixture
 Students will need eye protection if they too want to get hands
on after the additives have been added.
What did you have for breakfast? What nutrients do you think where in
it? Where do you think it is now?
 List the organs of the digestive system on the board and ask
them to put them into the order in which the food goes through
the body.
 Gums to bums demo
 Show a normal range of meals and drinks from a day.
Into a large box to simulate the mouth. Scrunch up with
hands/potato masher to represent teeth. Pupils can get
involved in this with care! Add some weak orange juice
to simulate saliva (this helps break down starchy foods
like bread and pasta)
 Now moved the food into the stomach (See through
bag). Add the water/acid – it is only used to kill off bad
bacteria in the stomach and to help the good bacteria
break the food down. Use hands outside the bag to
Costello School, Basingstoke
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Plenary
Follow-on work
really squash it up. Note that none of the nutrients have
left the bag – that happens later. Before you move the
food from the stomach to the intestines, add the bile –
this reduces the acidity and protects the rest of the
digestive system from damage. Add some strong coffee
– this represents blood that our body doesn’t need and
is the thing that makes poo brown! You can still sort of
tell it was food and doesn’t quite look like poo yet…
Optional: Add the mixture into a blender! This will help it
to look as broken down as possible (although it’s the
stomach enzymes that do this job in the stomach.
Spoon the mixture into one leg of tights (this bit is very
messy!) the small intestines squash the food along,
letting all the good bits squeeze outside so our bodies
get energy and nutrients.
Keep squashing it down to the end (the large intestine.
This is where the body gets as much water out of the
food as possible – really squeeze it!
Gets to the bowels – snip a small hole in the end of the
tights and squeeze one out!
This is a model of your digestive system. How is this process different to
the real process? (length of time, no hands/mechanical processes after
the teeth)
 Build a model of the digestive system, labelling the organs and
their role in digestion
 Research different illnesses and disease that affect digestion –
which organ is affected by each of them (Food poisoning,
diarrhoea, Crohns disease, heartburn)