Human Body Organs Diagram

Teaching ideas for Human Body Organs

Pick the ideas that suit your class, then follow the plan or use the sheets in any order.

• Organs in place. Draw a large body outline on butcher paper. Groups cut the ten organs out of colored paper and tape each one in its place, using the labeled diagram.
• Feel your heartbeat. Students rest a hand flat on the chest, a little left of the middle, and feel the heart beating. Then they press gently along the ribs that guard it.
• Left or right?. Stand facing the class and raise your right hand. Students see it on their left. That is why the liver is on the left of the diagram.
• Sort the team. Write each organ on a card. Groups sort the cards into body systems, then tell how two of the systems help each other.

A plan for the week

Day 1	Open with one of the ideas above. Teach the lesson with the slides while students fill in the guided notes. Then students label the blank diagram.	Lesson slides (PowerPoint) (in the pack) Human Body Organs Guided Notes (in the pack) Human Body Organs Diagram Blank Human Body Organs
Day 2	Students work out what is happening on the picture on “Read the Diagram”: where urine goes, which way food travels, which side the heart tips toward and which organ hides part of a kidney.	Read the Diagram (in the pack)
Day 3	Read “Your Body’s Team of Organs” and answer the questions.	Your Body’s Team of Organs (in the pack)
Day 4	Students read what ten body parts do on “Sort the Body Systems” and sort each one into its system.	Sort the Body Systems (in the pack)
Day 5	Review with the crossword, then give the quiz.	Human Body Organs Crossword (in the pack) Human Body Organs Quiz (in the pack)

The sheets marked “in the pack” are in the Human Body Organs teaching pack below.

NGSS standards

• Supports 4-LS1-1: Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.
• Supports MS-LS1-3: Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

Human Body Organs worksheets, crossword and quiz

The Human Body Organs teaching pack is 22 lesson slides (PowerPoint and PDF) and 8 printables with answer keys for grades 3 to 5, in the order you would teach them: the guided notes for the lesson slides, the labeled diagram and the blank one to label, then “Read the Diagram” (a worksheet), “Your Body’s Team of Organs” (a reading passage), “Sort the Body Systems” (a sorting table), a vocabulary crossword and a quiz.

The sheets are in a suggested teaching order: teach the lesson, have students label the blank diagram, then work through the practice sheets and finish with the quiz. Use them all over a week or pick the ones you need. The answer keys are together at the back.

The diagram and the blank one to label are free to download on this page. The other sheets come with the pack ($7), which is also in the Elementary Science bundle (grades 3 to 6).

The major organs and their jobs

Your body has organs that each do a special job. This human body organs diagram shows where the major organs sit inside you, from the brain in your head to the bladder low in your belly. Here is what happens at each labeled part of the diagram:

Organ	What it does	Why it matters
Brain	The control center of the body. It thinks, remembers and sends messages to every part of you.	The brain sits inside the skull, which protects it. It sends and receives messages along nerves, so it can tell your muscles to move and feel what your skin touches. It also runs jobs you never think about, like breathing and how fast your heart beats, even while you sleep.
Trachea	The windpipe: a tube that carries air from your throat down to your lungs.	Stiff rings of cartilage hold the trachea open so air can always get through. You can feel the ridges of these rings at the front of your neck. At the bottom, the trachea splits into two branches, one going into each lung.
Lungs	Two spongy organs in the chest that take in oxygen when you breathe in and get rid of carbon dioxide when you breathe out.	Inside, the lungs are filled with millions of tiny air sacs. Oxygen passes from the air in the sacs into the blood, and carbon dioxide, a waste gas, passes out of the blood to be breathed out. The left lung is a little smaller than the right one, to make room for the heart.
Heart	A strong muscle that pumps blood all around the body.	The heart sits in the middle of the chest, between the lungs and tipped a little to the left. It is about the size of your fist. In a resting child it beats about 70 to 110 times a minute, pushing blood through blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients to every part of the body.
Liver	The largest organ inside the body. It takes harmful things out of the blood and makes bile, a juice that helps digest fat.	The liver sits in the upper right part of the belly, tucked under the ribs. It does hundreds of jobs. It takes harmful things out of the blood, stores sugar and vitamins for later, and makes bile, which helps the small intestine break down fat.
Stomach	A stretchy bag that mixes food with strong juices and starts to break it down.	Food reaches the stomach through a tube from the mouth called the esophagus. The stomach sits in the upper left part of the belly. Its muscles squeeze and churn the food, and its juices, which include a strong acid, turn it into a thick, soupy mix. Food stays in the stomach for a few hours before it moves on.
Small intestine	A long, coiled tube where food is broken down the rest of the way and taken into the blood.	It is called “small” because it is narrow, not because it is short. In a living adult it is about 3 meters (10 feet) long, folded up to fit in the middle of the belly. Its inside wall is covered in tiny finger-like bumps that soak up the nutrients from food.
Large intestine	A wide tube that takes water out of leftover food and turns it into solid waste.	The large intestine is wider than the small intestine but only about half as long, about 1.5 meters (5 feet). It goes up one side of the belly, across the top and down the other side, like a frame around the small intestine. As leftover food moves through it, water is taken back into the body and the waste becomes solid.
Kidneys	Two bean-shaped organs that clean the blood and make urine out of waste and extra water.	Each kidney is about the size of a fist. They sit toward the back of the body, one on each side of the spine, just below the ribs. Blood flows through them all day long, and they filter out waste and extra water. This makes urine, which flows down two thin tubes to the bladder.
Bladder	A stretchy bag low in the belly that stores urine until you go to the bathroom.	The bladder sits low in the belly, between the hip bones. Its walls stretch as it fills, like a balloon. When it starts to get full, nerves send a message to your brain that it is time to go to the bathroom.

How to print

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Frequently asked questions

Related: Take a closer look at single body systems with our digestive system, respiratory system, heart and excretory system diagrams.