Summary
In this lesson, students will explore the tissues, structures, and functions of the musculoskeletal system, with a specific emphasis on skeletal muscle and bodily motion. They will observe tissues under a microscope and compare tissue structure with the functions of muscle, bone, and connective tissues. Using this understanding, they will model in two ways how the muscular and skeletal systems interact to produce movement: through a kinesthetic demonstration and an animated and/or physical model of their own creation.
Essential Question(s)
How do the muscular and skeletal systems interact to produce movement?
Snapshot
Engage
From video clips, students compare the movement of a "weasel war dance" and people doing parkour.
Explore
Students observe musculoskeletal tissues under a microscope.
Explain
Students take notes on the musculoskeletal system and discuss the relationship between the structure and function of its tissues.
Extend
Students solve the problem of how bodies move at a joint if muscles can only pull in one direction.
Evaluate
Students create a flipbook, a stop-motion animation, or a physical model to demonstrate how the parts of the musculoskeletal system work together to produce a simple motion.
Materials
Lesson Slides (attached)
Examining Tissues (attached, one per student)
Digital microscope (with LCD screen preferred, see Explore)
Anatomy slides (product names may include "histology," see Explore)
Materials to create a musculoskeletal model (optional, see Evaluate)
Engage
10 Minute(s)
Use the attached Lesson Slides to guide the lesson. Display slides 3 and 4 to review the essential question and lesson objectives to the extent you feel necessary. Have students use a piece of notebook paper to draw a T-chart with the labels of stoat and people on the T-chart. Move to slide 5 and have students watch the “Stoat Hypnotizes Rabbit” video, which demonstrates the hunting behavior of a stoat, colloquially referred to as a "weasel war dance." Have them take notes on the left side of the T-chart about how the stoat moves as they watch the video.
Move to slide 6 and have students watch “The World's Best Parkour and Freerunning,” which shows people performing parkour. Have them take notes on the right side of the T-chart about how the person moves as they watch the video.
After viewing the videos, tell students to compare their ideas with an elbow partner.
Ask for a few volunteers to describe the similarities and differences they noticed between the videos. Then, ask the class if they think there is a difference in what makes the stoats and people move the way they do, and if so, what is the difference?
Explore
20 Minute(s)
Transition to slide 7. Tell students that they will be examining different tissues from the muscular and skeletal system under the microscope and provide classroom-specific instructions for how students are expected to move through stations. Pass out the attached Exploring Tissues handout. Be sure to adjust the number of entries in advance based on how many slides students explore.
As they observe the slides, students should describe in words and draw what they see under the microscope on the Exploring Tissues handout. Non-scientific language is acceptable to describe what they observe since most are unlikely to have seen histology slides before.
Explain
25 Minute(s)
At this point, it is appropriate to engage students in a mini-lecture and note-taking exercise. Consider using the STAR Notes strategy to help students organize the information on a piece of notebook paper.
Move to slide 8. Make clear that what we commonly refer to as the musculoskeletal system is actually a combination of the muscular system and the skeletal system. This system may also be referred to as the locomotor system. Transition to slide 9 and ask for volunteers to share what they know about the parts of the system before continuing on to the notes.
Use slides 10-13 to review the basic structures and functions of the musculoskeletal system. As you cover each of the components, have students describe the characteristics they observed in the microscopes. Ask them to speculate on how the structures they observed under the microscopes support the function of the tissues (e.g., density of bone tissue on a slide relative to the strength of bone). Through this discussion, highlight student ideas that support the concept of hierarchical organization: systems are made of many parts and each individual system is part of a larger system (e.g., muscle cells make up individual muscles, which make up the muscular system, which are part of the larger musculoskeletal system).
Extend
10 Minute(s)
Return students attention to the videos they watched in the Engage. To help students move from the scale of the entire musculoskeletal system down to a simple motion, facilitate a brief, open-ended discussion as a class about how the structures of the musculoskeletal system relate to the motion students observed in the videos. For example, connective tissue like tendons and ligaments keep the individual parts of the system together.
After students have taken notes, they will apply this information to determine how the musculoskeletal system interacts to produce movement. Display slide 14 and present students with the following problem:
Body movement happens at joints. If each muscle is only able to pull in a single direction, how is movement possible?
As a whole class, ask students to give you instructions one step at a time for how to move (e.g., taking a step, raising and lowering an arm), and demonstrate the motion as they call it out. Encourage them to describe the movement in terms of which muscle is pulling which bone (by location not name; e.g., the muscle at the upper part of the arm is pulling the forearm bone). Ask them to explain their reasoning for each step and redirect or ask probing questions if they are offering ideas that do not work. They should reach the conclusion that muscles must work in pairs to produce movement.
Students can follow the same procedure in pairs/small groups as well, but the activity is often more engaging as a group exercise.
Evaluate
40 Minute(s)
Transition to slide 15 and pass out approximately 10-20 sticky notes to each student. Tell students to create a stop-motion or flipbook animation to explain how the musculoskeletal system components interact in order to create movement, specifically simple flexion/extension (e.g., bending and extending your forearm at the elbow) or abduction/adduction (e.g., arm motion during jumping jacks). Note that students do not need to identify the names of these motions or distinguish between them for the purpose of this lesson.
Students may give a written or oral explanation (e.g., voice over, class presentation) which should identify the relevant components, their functions, the connections between them, and how these together produce motion. As long as students provide some context for their animation, there are a variety of choices you could give students for executing this, including:
picking a specific joint to model, using the actual muscles involved
creating a generic model of a joint
choosing a non-human animal as their subject
identifying a simple motion from the videos
Resources
Cloud stop motion. (n.d.). Cloud Stop Motion - make stop motion animation in your browser. https://cloudstopmotion.com/home/schools
CrashCourse. (August 27, 2012). Big guns: The muscular system - crashcourse biology #31. YouTube. https://youtu.be/jqy0i1KXUO4
CrashCourse. (May 26, 2015). Joints: Crash course anatomy & physiology #20. YouTube. https://youtu.be/DLxYDoN634c
CrashCourse. (June 15, 2015). Muscles, part 2 - organismal level: Crash course anatomy & physiology #22. YouTube. https://youtu.be/I80Xx7pA9hQ
CrashCourse. (May 18, 2015). The skeletal system: Crash course anatomy & physiology #19. YouTube. https://youtu.be/rDGqkMHPDqE
File:Axial Skeleton Diagram blank.svg. Wikimedia Commons. (n.d.). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Axial_skeleton_diagram_blank.svg
Histology Guide Slide Set https://histologyguide.com//slidebox/slidebox.html
K20 Center. (n.d.). Star Notes. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/69
K20 Center. (n.d.). T-Chart. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/86
Nat Geo Wild. (October 1, 2012). Stoat hypnotizes rabbit: World's deadliest. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ODEUK5sB5vE
PKFRTV. (February 2, 2022). The world's best parkour and freerunning. YouTube. https://youtu.be/PqeBGJXH-uQ
