Body Maps (Informazing) by David Drew

Body Maps (Grades 3–5)s

Informazing series

by David Drew illustrated by Ester Kasepuu

Discover how your body works by exploring these maps and diagrams of your skeleton, teeth, ears, tongue, skin, and brain.

Students can compare the human body with other animals, using the diagrams to write their own Body Book.

Grade level 3–5

Visual literacy

Block diagrams : to reveal what is inside your skin (as on the book's cover).

Picture glossaries: to name parts of the skeleton, the ear, and the brain.

Cross sections: to look inside an elephant's foot, a shark's jaw, a rattlesnake's head, and a human ear or tooth.

Color-coded diagrams: to link parts of a human hand with parts of a whale's flipper, a bat's wing, and a horse's leg ... or to figure out what animals eat by looking at their teeth.

Maps: to find out why you taste oranges with the front of your tongue, but lemons with the sides of it.

Subject areas

English/Language Arts

Writing explanations using diagrams as research material

Interpreting diagrams that define technical terms or explain processes

Science/Technology

Human body: skeleton, limbs, skin, ear, tongue, hair, brain, nerves

Animal features and how they are used

Animal adaptation

Mathematics

Matching and counting details

Learning strategies

Research practice: close reading of diagrams

Recomposing: reading information in one form (diagrams) in preparation for writing in another form (essay)

Samples from the book

Color-coded diagram

This kind of diagram helps us to locate information quickly, by using the key (left) to "decode" the diagram (right). More about color-coded diagrams can be found on our Examples page.

Map or diagram?

What is the difference between a diagram and a map? This visual text could be called a map, a diagram, or a picture glossary. A map can be thought of as a special kind of diagram; the only difference is that in a map we are looking down on the subject. A picture glossary is a diagram that names its parts. This book might have been called Body Diagrams.

NEW: more on maps here.

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Cross section

A cross section shows and names the usually hidden parts of an object, often in order for us to see how those parts are connected. The details are shown on a flat plane, as if "cut with a knife."

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Ideas to get you started

We easily forget how much information can be found in diagrams. Children who are not fluent readers of sentences can learn successfully using their visual skills, if we provide them with clear, detailed diagrams like those in this book. The following activity helps develop visual literacy skills.

Make a list of questions for children to answer by simply reading the diagrams and their captions. Here are some typical questions. All can be answered by looking closely at the diagrams on pages 4–5:

How many fingers do whales have? (5 in each flipper)
Which animal has fingers that are longer than its legs? (a bat)
How many toes do horses have on each foot? (1)
Look at the thickness of the bones. How can you tell which are the heaviest animals? (Whales and rhinos: they have thicker bones to support their weight)

No book has "all the answers." Reference books always answer some of our questions while at the same time provoking other questions. As a stimulus to further research, encourage students to speculate about the reasons for the differences they can see in the diagrams. Again looking closely at pages 4–5, record the questions the students ask. Typical questions are:
- Why are the bones of flying animals so thin?
- If my fingers were as long as my legs, would I be able to fly?

You can apply this strategy to other pages in the book, such as the Teeth diagrams (on pages 7–9).
Having made notes based on the information in the diagrams, students can write their own short book about the human body. Divide the students into teams, each team responsible for one of the topics in the book.

Contents of Body Maps

Bones
Arms and legs
Hands and feet
Skulls and teeth
Skin and hair
Tongue
Ear
Brain
Sensitive skin
Index

These books are now out of print

Second-hand copies can sometimes be bought from

abe.com CLICK HERE

Companion book: Body Facts

Have you ever wondered why you breathe, blink, or cough? When you cut your hair, why doesn't it hurt? This surprising book answers some of the most puzzling questions about how our bodies work. Illustrated with color photographs taken with a scanning electron microscope.

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