Unit 01 · Body Systems & Wellness Basics
This unit builds from the inside out: the major body systems — circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, musculoskeletal, and immune — what each one does, and how they work together to keep a whole person running. You’ll learn what “wellness” means as a baseline for the whole person, and how to read your own baseline measurements — like a resting heart rate — calmly, as neutral data about how your body works and never as a judgment about how it looks. Mastery means you can map the systems and reason about wellness from evidence, not memorized facts.
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Major body systems & their functions | Confuses the major body systems or cannot say what any one of them does. | Names the systems but stumbles explaining the job each one performs. | Names the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, musculoskeletal, and immune systems and explains the core function of each. |
| How the systems work together | Treats each body system as if it worked alone. | Knows the systems connect but cannot trace how one depends on another. | Traces how systems cooperate — e.g. how the respiratory and circulatory systems together deliver oxygen to working muscles. |
| Reading your own baseline data | Cannot take or read a simple baseline measurement like a resting heart rate. | Records a measurement but treats the number as a verdict rather than as data. | Takes a resting-heart-rate baseline and reads it calmly as neutral data about function — never as a judgment about body size or looks. |
| Wellness as a whole-person baseline | Thinks wellness means only one thing, like just being fit. | Lists a few parts of wellness but cannot connect them into a whole-person picture. | Describes wellness as a whole-person baseline — physical, mental, and social — and explains why no single measure captures it. |
| Anchor lab (body-systems & wellness self-assessment) | Skips the self-assessment or fills it in without taking any measurements. | Completes the self-assessment but cannot explain what the data shows. | Completes the body-systems & wellness self-assessment, records baseline data carefully, and interprets it as neutral evidence about how the body works. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit across History · Reading · Writing — including the James Lind scurvy trial as the root of evidence-based health — and defends why the connection matters. |
“My resting heart rate is a baseline — a starting number about how my heart works, not a score about my body. And breathing and circulation are a team: my lungs load the oxygen, my blood carries it to my muscles. That’s a system I can trace, not a fact I memorized.”
“The heart… pumps blood? And wellness is like being healthy, I guess — I’m not sure how the parts fit together.”
You demonstrate this unit through the body-systems & wellness self-assessment plus short oral checks where you reason from evidence aloud — not a multiple-choice test. A criterion counts as mastered only when you can both take the measurements and justify the body-systems science behind them. Mastery is demonstrated, not awarded.
A 5-page clipboard packet — unit overview, key terms, the mastery rubric, anchor examples, and a score sheet you can print and grade against.