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Reading for EL Entering and Newcomers

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The Digestive System

You eat with your mouth. You also talk and breath with your mouth as well. The mouth is the beginning of the digestive system. It is where you chew your food.

The Mouth

​The esophagus is the tube that leads from the mouth to your stomach. The esophagus has muscles that pushes your food downward toward your stomach.

​​The Esophagus

Tubes are a long, hollow cylinder of metal, plastic, or glass, which are used to move liquid or gas from one place to another.

Tube

The mouth is the opening in someones face that they eat food with and speak from.

​​Mouth

The esophagus is the tube that moves food from your mouth to your stomach.

​​Esophagus

Chewing is the thing people do when they put food in their mouth and bite down on it over and over again.

​​Chew

​Your stomach, which is attached to the end of the esophagus, is a stretchy sack shaped like the letter J. It has three important jobs:

1. to store the food you've eaten

2. to break down the food into a liquidy mixture

3. to slowly empty that liquidy mixture into the small intestine

The Stomach

​Stretchy is a describer word that describes something that can be pulled bigger and longer.

​​Stretchy

​To store means to put something away. For example, you can store your things in a box. Many times when people put things in a box, they are putting it in a box.

Store

Empty means that there is nothing inside of something. For example, if there is no gas in your gas tank, your tank is empty. If there is nothing in a box, the box is empty.

​​Empty

​The stomach is like a mixer, churning and mashing together all the small balls of food that came down the esophagus into smaller and smaller pieces. It does this with help from the strong muscles in the walls.

The Stomach

A mixer is anything that stirs and mixes different things together. When people use the word mixer, they usually mean a machine that mixes food together. But it can be used to refer to anything that mixes.

​​Mixer

Mashing is when you crush something, usually food, into a paste. Mashing is done by taking a hard object and hitting food until it becomes a paste.

​​Mashing

​The small intestine is a long tube that's about 1½ inches to 2 inches around. It's packed inside you beneath your stomach. If you stretched out an adult's small intestine, it would be about 22 feet long. The small intestine breaks down the food mixture even more so your body can absorb all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

The Small Intestine

​At 3 or 4 inches around, the large intestine is fatter than the small intestine. It's almost the last stop on the digestive tract. Like the small intestine, it is packed into the body, and would measure 5 feet long if you spread it out.

The Large Intestine

Your liver is the largest solid organ in your body. By the time you're grown up, it will be about the size of a football. The liver does many jobs, but here are three big ones:

1. It cleans your blood.

2. It produces an important digestive liquid called bile.

3. It stores energy in the form of a sugar called glycogen.​

The Liver