Welcome to GI physiology lessons, veterinary style!

Throughout this book there are multiple lessons to teach students in elementary grades about different gastrointestinal (GI) physiology topics in the veterinary world. There are two subsections, K-2nd grade and 3rd-5th grade. These are rough guidelines! Within each subsection, each lesson has two different pages: an instructor guide and a student page. Please realize that the creators of these lessons are planning to become veterinarians, not teachers. They are excited to create opportunities for applied learning that wasn’t available when they were in elementary school but are not trained as educators.

We often picture these lessons as supplementary for a small portion of the class or for homeschooling use. We have tried to be as inclusive as possible but phrasing may lean toward the classroom and full class. We have also tried to make the lessons as self-sufficient as possible so they can be run by a certified instructor, parent or classroom assistant.

In this section we will walk over how we envision you using both pages.

Instructor guide

This section is an informational guide to the contents of the lesson, including student objectives, lesson formatting, lesson background, common misconceptions that may arise in the lesson, and instructions for how to teach this lesson. This page does do not serve as the primary learning material, rather it is a supplementary guide to the lesson to provide more context for those who may be guiding a learner along their journey. Links to the student page can be found within the instructor guide. This page will also dictate resources and time needed to complete the lesson, so may be useful to reference before setting out onto the student page. Please forgive us if the “guides” occasionally seem condescending, too simple or too complex. We needed guidelines to make this doable with 200 veterinary students and probably missed the mark in most cases.

Student page

This section serves as the lesson itself. Within it you will find student objectives, a lesson, an interactive activity and an assessment. This page is primarily for students to work through, either independently or within a group setting. All lessons should be self-contained, and only require the student to reference that specific page. If there are any issues or misconceptions that arise, please reference the instructional guide for ways to tackle those topics.

Further exploration

At the end of both the instructor guide and the student page there will be links to extra resources that you, or your student, may find interesting to explore after the lesson. These represent just a few options for continued learning. There are many other, more advanced lessons on similar topics throughout this text book. Please feel free to explore those, as they may fit your learner’s level as well.

We encourage you to use these lessons as starting points. You are welcome to expand, share and revise as you wish.

There are other books in this series. You may also want to explore one or both of these:

Lesson Plans for GI Physiology Topics, Middle School Edition

Lesson Plans for GI Physiology Topics, High School & Undergraduate Edition

Enjoy!