Here are a number of links to Internet sites that contain information and/or other links related to the specific theme of the body's Muscular System. Please read our disclaimer.

Health and Wellness : Body Atlas

This site has a wide ranging set of diagrams that serve as "road maps" of the various systems of the human body. See their links to the Muscles.

Better Body Books

High school students are challenged to learn the structures and functions of a body system thoroughly so that they will be able to pass on the concepts and ideas to younger students in the form of children's books.

Body Quest

A 1997 Think Quest award winner, this site is designed for students ages 11-16 wishing to learn more about anatomy. This link is to the main page which contains 18 sub-selections. Click on 'Muscular System' for a brief summary of the system and graphics of body muscles.

What Makes Your Body Move?

A Website in which students examine muscle systems. A complete set of muscle names accompanies the illustrations.

How the Body Works: The Muscles

Several animated pages illustrate how contracting muscles pull on the bones, which are hinged at joints, and how the muscles are connected to the bones. (Requires Shockwave)

Jumpy Dolls

In this culminating activity on a unit on the muscular system from Access Excellence, students design and construct a jointed figure that moves in a motion something like jumping jacks when a string is pulled.

Nature's Best: The Human Body

This link is to the home page of Nature's Best: The Human Body - a site intended for high school students. After selecting an appropriate level of bandwidth, you'll be taken to a menu page offering information on all 8 human body systems (Circulatory, Digestive, Immune, Muscular, Nervous, Reproductive, Respiratory, and Skeletal). Select "Muscular" for a description of cardiac, smooth, and skeletal muscle types and for an investigation on how groups of muscles function in different areas in our body. (Note: You may have difficulty with the middle and high bandwidth options.)

Smile Program Biology Index

Teachers participating in the SMILE (Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement) summer session programs each create a single concept lesson plan. This database has 60 lesson plans in the section on Anatomy & Physiology that deal directly with the human body's senses and systems. Caution: Since there is a wide number of authors who have contributed to the database, the detail and quality of the lesson plans will vary.

TrackStar

TrackStar is an online interface which allows instructors to create lessons for students by sequencing existing instructional content in various Websites within a lesson. Students explore one topic at a particular location within one Website, then move on to the next topic at another web site. The list of topics remains visible throughout the lesson so that students can remain on track. Explorations of the Websites beyond the designated instructional content are also possible.

This link is to their search page from where a keyword search on "muscular and system" will produce a few hits. Caution #1: Many of the web sites that these lessons access may already be on this CLN page - it's the creation of lesson objectives and the sequencing of the tours through the sites that make the lesson potentially useful to your students. Caution #2: The quality of the lessons (e.g., definining objectives, finding web sites, sequencing the tours) will vary widely within the TrackStar collection.

Travel Brochure of the Body Systems

In this Access Excellence lesson plan for grades 9-12, students produce a travel brochure for a tour through each of 8 body systems and a working model of one of the systems.

What Machine Could Do All of This?

Would you like to find out how many time your heart beats in a day, or a month? Perhaps you would like to know the volume of air you inhale in a day, or a month? This site provides you with a range of information about your body systems.

Note: The sites listed above will serve as a source of curricular content in the body's Muscular System. For other resources in Science (e.g., curricular content in Earth Science, General Science, Life Science, or Physical Science), or for lesson plans and theme pages, click the "previous screen" button below. Or, click here if you wish to return directly to the CLN menu, which will give you access to educational resources in all of our subjects.