Transport Systems

Transport Systems: How Your Body Changes and Uses Food, Water and Air
Scholastic
Non-fiction/Informational

This is a scholastic informational book about how our body changes and uses food, water and air. This book contains explorations for children to help answer the many questions they may have about how their bodies work. Each section has a question like "how does your body take in air?" and then it presents an exploration exercise where students can build models to help them answer this question. The book then shows them how to interpret their results and interpret diagrams. At the end of the book there is a section called "For Science Browsers" that helps to answer questions many children probably have. For example, "why do I get the hiccups?" For easy access there is also a glossary of terms in the back to help students more easily find certain concepts that they are looking for or may be interested in. I think this is a book that every student could find a topic in that interests them because it is filled with so much useful, yet interesting information. Not to mention, it gives them a cool exercise to try in each section.

This book itself provides various activities for students to do, but it could also be used in the classroom in other ways. You could use this book to help get students interested in Science. I'm sure that many of them may not realize that questions they have about their bodies are science related. You could have your students work in pairs and perform their favorite exploration activity and then ask them to write in their science notebooks about questions they may have had before, during or after the exploration. Allow them to answer and discuss this information with their partners. Another way to use this book in the classroom would be to have students divide into groups and read and carry out one of the explorations and then share as a group with the whole class what they learned from their section.