Breathing in Grade 7

Grade 7 have been learning about Breathing and Respiration for the last 2 weeks. Here are some anecdotes from the classroom, shared by the Biology teacher:

Introducing the topic : We started with a fun activity which involved miming a reaction to a specific situation given by the teacher. The 4 scenarios were given to 4 children who volunteered to act. Neither the actors nor the observers knew what the topic was going to be. But when it was time to share their observations it became evident what was to come.. Breathing and Respiration of course!

One child walked up to me and said “Akka after learning about our cells in Biology, everytime I’m doing something using my muscles I’m imagining how hard the cells are working, how they are using glucose, giving energy and what will happen if that stops.“

The children had to present one example each of an organism that respires differently from us and explain how. One child brought an example of a ‘Butt Breathing turtle” and you can imagine what happened next!

Checking heart rates : One day Grade 7 was seen running up and down the stairs and later sat down with stopwatches with fingers on their wrists. A child said ..”Akka, my resting heart rate came down from the first reading of 88 to 74 by the 4th time I did it and I think it was because I was anxious about getting it right the first time but by the 4 the time. I was more relaxed and confident and that reflected in my heart rate.. Could it be true akka ? ” and I proudly said ”yes, of course!”.

After they had plotted their pre-exercise and post-exercise heart rates in graphs and arrived at their average readings we also confirmed it with a pulse oximeter. Excitement again! and I was delighted to find that many of their readings were quite close to what they had calculated themselves while some were also way off!

It has been a fulfilling and rewarding experience so far to see the children soak up all the information and process them so beautifully.