Draw what’s inside your body!

Meena Kharatmal

In this article, we illustrate children’s ideas about what they think is inside our body, through a drawing-based classroom activity. The objective of this activity is to help understand children’s prior knowledge, idiosyncratic ideas, and misconceptions (if any). It can act as a precursor to teaching scientific conceptions about organ systems and organs at primary and middle school level. The activity brings out the curiosity with which children think about organs and organ systems. Through this activity, teachers can focus on how to bring out the interconnections and missing links while teaching the various organ systems, organization, and function in the human body.

Activity Box
On the worksheet, provide an outline of the human body.
Teachers can ask the children to “Draw What is Inside Your Body”. (When they are asked to draw “your” body, it excites them to think about themselves, rather than asking them to draw the “human” body in general).
Let children imagine and think about what to draw, instead of prompting them to draw any specific organ system or organs.
This activity can be completed in just one class period.

We conducted the activity with primary children during a summer workshop at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai). There were 31 children from various places around Mumbai, aged 11-12 years (16 girls, 15 boys), studying in class 6 transitioning to class 7. Figure 1 shows a representative sample of the children’s drawings of organ systems and organs. Most of the drawings have been labelled by the children themselves.

From all the children’s drawings, we studied which specific organ systems and organs were preferred and drawn, shown in Figure 2.

From the pie chart shown in Figure 2, it can be seen that the most common organ system represented is the digestive system followed by the respiratory system. It indicates that children think that the most common and easily relatable system in day-to-day life is digestion and respiration. The least represented are the excretory system, skeletal, and circulatory systems. The reproductive system is not at all thought of, probably because children at the primary level are still not clear about this organ system or it has not been addressed.

The children seem to be aware of the position of the organs, for example, the oesophagus, the intestines, the lungs, the trachea and the brain. However, there was a problem seen in the positioning and proportionally depicting the pancreas; some of them have drawn it above the stomach while some have drawn it below the stomach, closer to the liver and the small intestine. Organs such as the kidneys and the bladder were least frequently indicated, but were correctly positioned. Quite a few are out-of-proportion drawing of organs, for example, the liver, the stomach, the kidney and the bladder.

Some organs are drawn out of proportion with respect to the respective organ system. For example, the stomach is drawn quite large like a sac, thinking that it is the place where food is stored or getting digested prominently. However, the idea that the size of stomach is smaller than what is drawn, needs to be emphasized during teaching. All the drawings have shown the liver at the right side of the body. When the digestive system was depicted, some children even drew the duodenum, the rectum, the anus as specific details. Surprisingly, there is no drawing of the heart, a vital organ, in any of the children’s drawings. One of the drawings has depicted specific and minor details in the nervous system, such as medulla oblongata, and peripheral nerves.

Further, we analyzed the number of organs listed in each organ system in the children’s drawings (Table). It appears the wider the organ system is represented, more are the number of organs listed.

Organ Systems	List of Organs	Number of Organs
Digestive System	Mouth, Buccal Cavity, Salivary Glands, Oesophagus, Liver, Pancreas, Gall Bladder, Stomach, Duodenum, Small Intestine, Large Intestine, Appendix, Rectum, Anus	14
Respiratory System	Nose, Epiglottis, Diaphragm, Trachea, Lungs, Bronchioles, Alveoli	7
Nervous System	Brain, Spinal Cord, Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Medulla Oblongata, Peripheral Nerves	6
Excretory System	Kidney, Bladder	2
Skeletal System	Skeleton, Skull, Eye Sockets, Rib Cage, Hand, Leg	6
Circulatory System	Muscles, Blood Cells	2

The table also indicates some misconceptions. For example, the appendix is shown as part of the digestive system. However, it is not a part of any organ system and is a vestigial organ. This can be addressed during classroom teaching.

Figure 3 shows the most widely drawn organ – the mouth, the small intestine, the large intestine, the stomach, followed by the nose, the lungs, the diaphragm, the trachea, the anus – indicating wider awareness or knowledge of the digestive and respiratory system only. Organs such as the kidney and the bladder are drawn by very few children.

Children seem to have a fair idea of organs and their position within a common organ system, such as the digestive system. However, they seem to lack knowledge about the connection of the organ systems even though they are aware of the organs in the not-so-common organ system, such as the skeletal system. This way, with their ideas, teachers can teach how organs are connected and organized as a functional system. The connections between the organs and as a functional system can be brought about with a contextualized task, for example, by asking to draw what happens inside your body when you eat food.

Some of the drawings have shown a combination of various organ systems together with appropriate labelling. These are digestive, respiratory, along with nervous and excretory systems. At times, a combination of blood cells and muscles is indicated along with the digestive and respiratory systems. To all it may seem a challenging task to indicate more than one organ system. Also it could be that it was not part of the instruction.

To sum up, this activity can be easily carried out by teachers in one class period. Teachers can either conduct this activity before teaching the organ systems to know about children’s prior knowledge and get an idea of any misconceptions. It can also be conducted after teaching the topic to evaluate the ‘before and after teaching’ of organ systems. Further, the activity can help towards establishing the structure-function relation in higher classes. In this way, it would not only be a fun activity, but also facilitate teachers in assessment, to relate to children’s ideas about organ systems and organs. Children’s drawings can become a valuable pedagogical tool in educational research.

We are happy to acknowledge the children for their drawings. We are thankful to Shri. Gajanan Mestry for help with scans of drawings. We acknowledge the support of the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy, under Project No. 12-R&D-TFR-6.04-0600.

The author is a scientific staff at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Mumbai. She is interested in biology education research. She can be reached at meena@hbcse.tifr.res.in.