Keep this light. Pose the question and take a few guesses about the length of the gut (it is several metres in an adult). Don't reveal the answer yet, the gut rope in the next step does that.

Ask 'How does food keep moving even when you lie down?' to plant the idea of peristalsis without naming it.

These tables are the pupils' on-screen content. Read the concept table carefully, then run quickly down the short jobs table (one verb each) so pupils get the shape of the journey without being front-loaded. The fuller detail lives on the printed organ cards pupils read on the floor in the next step. Head off the common idea that food falls down by gravity: peristalsis squeezes it along, so it works upside down too.

Model the thinking aloud as a think-aloud demonstration before pupils do their own: 'I wonder how food gets all the way down. I predict it gets squeezed, like toothpaste. Let me test it by squeezing this ball through the tights tube. I observed the ball moved even when I tipped the tube upwards. So I think the gut muscles squeeze food along, gravity is not the boss.'

The printed organ cards carry the one-line job for each part (mouth: teeth chew the food and saliva softens it; food pipe: peristalsis squeezes it down; stomach: churned and mashed into a soupy mush; small intestine: the goodness/nutrients are soaked up; large intestine: water is soaked out of the leftover waste), so pupils can describe what happens at each part without guessing.

This runs as parallel group work (groups of 4–5), each group with its own rope, card set and peristalsis prop. Decide before the lesson: a 5m rope laid straight per group needs real floor space, so count your likely groups against your cleared floor area first. If 6–7 groups each need a straight 5m rope and the room won't take it, run one shared whole-class gut-rope build instead and still give each group a tights tube and ball so every group does the peristalsis demo. The pupil-facing description now names the peristalsis demo as a group job in both routes, so no group is left idle during a shared build.

Before: push back desks to clear as much floor as you can; print the provided organ cards (one set per group). Each card carries the part name and its one-line job.

Tights fallback: keep two or three spare tights legs (or long socks) in your kit so any group without one is covered; a tube of stretchy fabric works just as well.

Drive the science-talk as groups work: 'What happens to food in the stomach? Why is the small intestine so long and folded?' Look for groups ordering by the job each part does, not by guesswork. The expected answer to the prediction is the small intestine, because food spends the longest time there being soaked up; accept and praise reasoned predictions even if the guess differs.

Differentiation: give a struggling group the first and last cards already placed.

Drive the interactive on the IWB as a reasoning check, not a fresh re-build, so pupils don't feel they are repeating the floor task. The five cards are mouth, food pipe, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, joined left to right by arrows labelled 'food moves to'. For each arrow ask 'why does this part come AFTER the one before it? What job had to happen first?' (e.g. food must be chewed in the mouth before it can be squeezed down the food pipe; it must be mashed in the stomach before the small intestine can soak up the goodness). This makes pupils justify the order rather than just rebuild it. Keep it low-stakes: reassure pupils that several reasons are fine and accept any sensible answer, so the harder reasoning question does not feel like a test. Fold in pupils not at the board with 'are they right? what would you say comes next and why?'

Start with a short display-only discussion. Revoice pupil ideas and tie them back to peristalsis: the gut muscles squeeze food along, so gravity is not needed. Confirm the one-way order: mouth, food pipe, stomach, small intestine, large intestine.

Then direct pupils to their Investigation Journal drawing (this is the DrawingRecord): draw the journey of food, label each part in order, and add an arrow showing the direction of travel.

Quick recap, read the bullets with the class. Optional home task: ask an adult what they had for dinner and trace its journey through the body in your head. Pack the ropes and tights away safely.