Best Websites for Teaching Human Body Systems
I love incorporating research and web-based learning into my Human Body unit. While I plan a hands-on activity or demonstration for almost every day of our human body systems unit, my students also complete web-based research for each body system that our curriculum requires.
They learn about the structures and functions of body systems, research diseases and ailments that can affect each system, and learn how to keep the system healthy. Because of these amazing websites, my students can engage with videos, interactives, zoom in to learn more about specific body parts, see engaging photographs, and learn through articles written on their level. Today, I’m sharing nine of my favorite upper elementary websites for teaching human body systems!
1) KidsHealth.org
KidsHealth.org is an amazing resource for students and teachers alike! The site contains student-centered articles like “Bones & Skeletal System,” “Brain & Nervous System,” and the Digestive System and videos like How Bones Work, How Muscles Work, and How the Skin Works. Diagrams, slide shows, and short video clips are weaved into articles to help students develop a better understanding of the system and it’s function. If you want to dig in, KidsHealth also provides teacher guides, helpful handouts, quizzes (with answer keys!), and activities to use with students. Really a win-win with this one!
2) Scholastic Study Jams
Scholastic Study Jams are a wonderful resource for science topics like the human body. Students can view engaging, animated videos or informative slideshows and even quiz themselves afterward! Some of the Study Jams that I point my students to during our human body systems unit include: Heredity, The Human Body, Skeletal System, Muscular System, Circulatory System, Respiratory System, Nervous System, and Digestive System. The videos and slideshows are also perfect for using in your lessons and showing on your interactive whiteboard.
3) The Human Body eBook for Grades 3-5
An elementary school class from Colchester, Vermont put the Human Body eBook together as a culminating project to show what they learned about the human body. It is such a cool find! I love letting my students learn from other children using this website.
Facts about parts of the human body are highlighted as the students read them aloud. Your students can learn and review basic body organs and the skeletal system and its function. Creating your own class research book or eBook would be a great way for students to represent their learning in a fun, interactive way that can be read again and again!
4) e-Learning For Kids
In Body Parts, from e-Learning for Kids, students meet an animated mechanic at The Robot Repair Garage who guides students as they build a robot playmate. Students start by building the frame for their playmate (selecting bones, muscles, and joints). The mechanic then takes students through other systems, explaining their importance for the human body, and thus the need to add to your robot.
Within each body system, students are able to hover over and click different parts in each system. A diagram and passage pop up to further explain the importance and function of the body part. Students can even have the passages read aloud to them! The systems and body parts students learn about in the building project include: bones, joints and muscles, the senses, the brain, the heart and blood, lungs and diaphragm, and stomach and intestines. Students can test their knowledge of each body systems with a brief quiz at the end of the tour.
5) Interactive Anatomy Learning Tools Grade 3-5
The Children's University of Manchester has built an AMAZING Interactive Anatomy Learning Tool that is an awesome resource for your students! This website has several interactive learning tools for kids to learn about the brain, teeth, skeleton, and digestive system. Students can click to watch bones and muscles move as partners, click to learn more about the role of different parts of the brain, follow food through the digestive system, and more!
This interactive website is perfect for student research because the slideshows are made up of short passages, bright diagrams and illustrations, and interactive components that are so engaging! Like, I can’t stop playing around on this website myself! The three learning sections that deal with the human body curriculum are Brain and Senses, Body and Medicines, Teeth and Eating, and Exercise .
Within each section students are guided through 8- 10 mini-interactive slideshows, which not only include great information on each topic, but fun games and quizzes as well! You’re going to want to set aside some serious time during your human body unit for your students to engage with this website!
6) DKfindout!
DKfindout! is a super engaging website that reminds me of those cool "lift the flap" books that kids always find so fascinating. Under the subject of the human body, students choose a topic they are interested in learning about. They can choose from topics like body defenses, brain and nerves, digestion, heart and blood, keeping healthy, life cycle, lungs and breathing, muscles, the senses, skeleton and bones, your amazing body, and the urinary system—pretty much every human body systems topic can be found on this website!
Once inside a topic, students see a short passage and an illustrated diagram with clickable touch-points that pop up with definitions, short explanations, and other diagrams that explain the subtopics in more detail. I LOVE how students can learn a lot about a body system while staying on one web page. And, unlike some sites that end up taking you down a rabbit-hole, DKfindout! is very student friendly with navigation tabs at the bottom of the page to help students easily return to broader topics within the human body.
7) Rader's Biology4Kids
Rader's Biology4Kids is a great website for reading about and completing research on the human body. The website is broken up into systems including the skeletal, muscular, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, nervous, endocrine, integumentary, immune, and lymphatic systems. The information in the articles are clearly written for upper elementary students with key vocabulary words highlighted in bold. At the end of each article, they’ve included a related video.
This website is a staple to have bookmarked for your students to use when researching human body systems! One side-note is that this website contains ads along the top and sidebar. It took me a minute to see how to navigate to other body systems—so, I highly recommend orienting your students to the website, pointing out the list of body systems in the navigation bar on the right—then, they will be good to go!
8) National Geographic for Kids
National Geographic for Kids is not just for learning about animals and cultures! Students can read articles like “15 Facts About the Human Body,” “The Digestive System,” “Our Amazing Brain,” “Follow Your Food,” “Your Amazing Brain,” and “Your Amazing Eyes”. The articles are written for elementary aged students and include fantastic graphics and illustrations.
Navigating to topics and articles of interest is the only downside to this website—they don’t seem to be organized by science field or specific topics. You’ll want to identify the articles you want students to read from National Geo Kids and send them directly to those—or, grab my PDF where I send you a google doc that has all of these websites and webpages already linked to make it easier for you to share with your students!
9) Wonderopolis
Wonderopolis is a website made for curious minds and is guaranteed to be a student favorite. It has thousands of engaging articles written as answers to different wonderings about the world, science, and other topics. Students can type in a question or topic and immediately access a board of fascinating articles. Each article is written FOR KIDS in clear, student-friendly language, complete with photographs, diagrams, and often a related video clip.
The articles are almost always followed with a short list of activities or guiding questions to encourage students to make greater connections to the articles. Students can even quiz themselves after they are done reading! For human body systems, students can get answers to questions like, How Does Blood Travel Through Your Body?, How Does Your Body Shut Down for Sleep?, Are Naps Good for the Body?, What Does the Appendix Do?, and How Many Cells are in the Human Body?.
Probably the coolest thing about Wonderopolis is that it's content is driven by users that submit questions they are curious about. New questions and articles are posted every day. This site is a must to have bookmarked on your class website for students to explore—whether for your human body systems unit or just to pull in another resource for engaging informational reading!
GET A PERSONAL COPY OF WEBSITES AND LINKS FOR YOUR HUMAN BODY SYSTEMS UNIT
Now, what are your next steps to get these websites into the hands of your students and get their human body systems research underway?
Before I send my students loose to research on the internet, I like to prepare a list of websites and page-specific links to help them more easily find information.
In hopes of saving you some valuable planning time (and help your students navigate their research with more ease), I’ve actually compiled all of these human body systems websites into a PDF download for you. I’ve even included research organizers for the circulatory system. These are the research sheets that my students complete during our study of each body system.
There you have it! 9 websites to engage and excite your students during their study of human body systems! I don’t know about you, but I am now SOOOOO excited to teach this topic. I can just predict that my students will be asking if we are going to use computers during science! Why, yes, yes we are!!!