Lesson video

(mouse clicking) <v ->Hello and welcome to today's lesson.

</v> My name is Mr. Swayze, and I'm really looking forward to teaching you today.

We're going to be doing a practical exploration of the pathway of blood around the body, so really pulling together our knowledge and what we've gleaned so far around how blood moves through the chambers of the heart but also how it then circulates around the body, and I'm gonna get you working hands-on to try and bring that to life to help it be more memorable.

So, as I said, today's lesson is called a Practical Exploration of the Pathway of Blood, and it comes from the Anatomy and Physiology, the Cardiorespiratory System unit.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to demonstrate your knowledge of the pathway of blood through the heart and around the body.

So, as I've mentioned already, this will be a juices flowing to build a walk-through heart to help you remember the main chambers, the different valves, and the blood vessels that carry that blood to different parts of the body.

The key words for today are atria, ventricle, valve and oxygenation.

You might want to pause the video to make a note of them, but I will explain them fully as we come across them later in the lesson and as we've explored.

The upper chambers of the heart are called the atria, the lower chambers of the heart are referred to as the ventricles, and then we have these valves in between the atria and the ventricles called the bicuspid and tricuspid valves, and then we have further valves on the exit from the heart called semilunar valves, and all of those valves are functioning to try and help prevent the backflow of blood so that once it's been pushed in one direction, it keeps going.

And then, as we know, the whole point in the circulatory system is to get oxygen around the body to the muscle tissues where it's needed in our case for performance sports so that we can do exercise.

So, in our lesson today, we've split it up into two parts.

The first part is gonna get you to reproduce a flow diagram that represents that blood flow, so a lot of retrieval practise followed by the second part, where you'll actually build out that walk through heart to follow the pathway of blood around the body.

I hope you're ready.

let's get started.

Okay, so blood flows around the double circulatory system in a set order.

Can you recall the main chambers and valves of the heart and the different blood vessels in the pulmonary and systemic circuits, I wonder? Can you list them out in the correct order that blood flows through the body? Okay, let's have a quick check.

This is a true or false question to get you going.

So, the pulmonary circuit takes blood to the body to deliver oxygen.

Is that true or false? That's right, it's false.

And why? Well, because we know that actually the word pulmonary is connected to the lungs, and actually this pulmonary circuit takes deoxygenated blood to the lungs to collect oxygen, and then it will return that oxygenated blood to the heart, ready to get pumped out to the body, and that is known as the systemic circuit when it gets pumped out to the body.

So, let's have a little look to see what sort of a flow diagram you might have come up with using this GIF.

So, I'll just let this run through once, and then I'll talk it over on the second circuit.

Okay, so we've got oxygen entering the body at the lungs and at the alveoli in the lungs that oxygen enters into the blood stream at the capillaries.

It follows the pulmonary vein back to the heart from the left atrium down through the bicuspid valve into the left ventricle up through the semilunar valve out through the aorta, where it circulates around the body, then back in through the vena cava, in through the right atrium, down through the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle, and then up out through the semilunar valve into the pulmonary artery.

Just gonna let that complete one more time.

Brilliant.

So, remember the left side of the heart carries oxygenated blood whereas the right side of the heart carries deoxygenated blood.

So, perhaps a nice easy way to remember that is that phrase LORD.

Left oxygenated, right deoxygenated blood shown here in red for oxygenated and blue for deoxygenated.

Okay, so having just watched that through a couple of times, I wonder, can you name the chambers that have been identified as A, B, C, and D.

Just pause for a moment to give you a chance to jot them down.

Okay, so A is that right atrium, and as we look at the diagram, it's obviously on the left hand side, but that's because it's reversed as if it's inside the body, and then B is the left atrium, so that's the oxygenated blood, and that's nearer your left armpit.

C is one of those bottom chambers, so the left ventricle, and then the other side of that septum wall we've got D, the right ventricle.

I hope you got that one right.

Okay, so this lesson is all about getting your hands on and doing a task to help you bring this to life and help make it far more memorable.

So, what I'd like you to do is to create labels for the key parts of that double circulatory system starting at the lungs and travelling around to the working muscles and then back via the heart and then back to the lungs.

So, you're gonna create maybe using post-it notes or pieces of paper, so you'll have a label of the right atria, a label of the right ventricle, a label for the body, and all the other labels that you need to talk through that motion of the blood around the double circulatory system.

So, pause the video now whilst you make your set of labels.

I should imagine you'll come up with 12 or 13 of them, so we'll have a look and see if yours are the same as mine in a moment.

Okay, well done.

Let's have a little look.

Did you come up with? So, we have the lungs already, but first of all, the oxygenated blood enters the pulmonary vein, is carried back to the left atrium, down through the bicuspid valve into the left ventricle, then out through the semilunar valve into the aorta, then on into the rest of the arteries where it's carried to the muscles of the body, and then veins carry that back in through the vena cava on the right side of the heart, into the right atrium first, so that top chamber on the right-hand side, down through the tricuspid valve, on down through the right ventricle, then out through the semilunar valve into that pulmonary artery and back to the lungs, and then, of course, that cycle will repeat itself, and you may have mentioned the word capillaries at the lungs and capillaries at the muscles.

Okay, and now we're really gonna bring all this to life, so the second part of this lesson I want you to use those labels to create a walk through pathway of blood around the body, and if you've got a fairly small space, you can set that up on the floor, or maybe you even want to go out into the garden, but set that up so that you can physically walk around that double circulatory system, calling out the names of the different parts along the way.

So in order to do that, my recommendation is that, as we said, if we just look at these images on the screen, sometimes it's hard to visualise what's going on inside our bodies, so to actually walk it through and say it out loud is a really good way to commit it to memory.

So, we're gonna create a replica of that pathway of blood around the double circulatory system on the floor somewhere.

So, to do this, we're gonna use different bits of equipment that we can lay those labels on that will represent the different parts of the circulatory system.

So, for example, you might use four mats, or four hula hoops, or four pieces of paper to represent the chambers of the heart.

You might use skipping ropes as the blood vessels so your arteries and your veins are lengths of rope, and then perhaps you use red and blue cones, or perhaps if you're doing this at home, red and blue items of clothing to represent those blood cells that are gonna be carrying blood around the body or carrying oxygen, should I say, around the body.

Okay, so let's have a quick check before you get on and do this task.

Which of the following does the skipping rope represent? Is it A, atria and ventricles? Is it B, the red blood cells? Or is it C, the arteries and veins? That's right, it's C, the arteries and veins is what I'm suggesting.

And a second quick check before you get on.

Which of the following does the mat or the hoop, or the piece of paper represent? Is it the atria and the ventricles? Is it the red blood cells? Or is it the arteries and veins? That's right, it's the chambers of the heart, so the atria and the ventricles.

And actually, if you if you had all the supplies at your disposal, I'd perhaps have two red hoops for the left atrium and the left ventricle, and then two blue hoops, hula hoops, for the right atrium and the right ventricle.

So what I would like you to do now is this main task for this lesson is if there's somebody else you can work with even better, because that we know that if you work together with people, that helps you learn things better, but if not, you can do this in isolation on your own and perhaps talk it through with a sibling, a parent, or a carer.

And using the following pieces of equipment, create a replica of the pathway of blood around the double circulatory system.

So, as I've just suggested, you might use four mats or four hula hoops or four mini whiteboards, or four pieces of paper to represent those four chambers of the heart.

Then a selection of red and blue cones or items of clothing that represent those blood cells red being oxygenated blood cells, blue being deoxygenated blood cells, and then some skipping ropes to represent the blood vessels.

You've got 10 minutes to do this challenge, so I'd like you to pause the video now and go and have a go at setting that up, and the most important thing is you're actually gonna walk it through and say it out loud to yourself.

That's proven as a really good strategy taught for writing a really good way of getting you to remember things if you've said them out loud.

Enjoy.

Okay, so your replica, if you've made it at home, perhaps looked a little bit like this, so you can see here where I've used some red t-shirts that are capturing that loop between the lungs and the left atrium, then out from the left ventricle round to the body, and then we've got blue items of clothing that are taking that deoxygenated blood from the body back into the right atria, down through the valve into the right ventricle, then out through another valve on its way up to the lungs to get reoxygenated again.

And maybe you've got a bit more creative with your equipment or you've been doing this one in school, and you can see this example here where the skipping ropes have been used, but also some tennis rackets and hockey sticks to help represent.

So, this is a really nice one again to talk through with other groups to help explain the rationale for using different materials for these different body parts.

Okay, so that brings that lesson to a close, so in summary, this practical exploration of the pathway of blood will have given you a better understanding of how deoxygenated blood travels from the body through the vena cava into the right atrium and then down into the right ventricle, and from the right ventricle that blood is pumped through the pulmonary artery up to the lungs for oxygenation.

The pulmonary vein, so that's the only vein in the human body that carries oxygenated blood, will carry that back from the lungs to the left atrium, then on down into the left ventricle, and as we know from that left ventricle, blood is pumped out at really high pressure through the aorta to be distributed throughout the body.

And then we've got a collection of valves in the heart to help prevent backflow, so we've got the bicuspid and tricuspid valves in between the atria and the ventricles, and then we've also got the semi-lunar valves on the exit from the ventricles out into the pulmonary artery, and out into the aorta.

I hope you've enjoyed learning that today with me and a slightly different slant on a lesson.

See you next time! (mouse clicking).