The amazing journey of a sandwich · Grade 5

The passage and its 6 questions

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions in full sentences.

• Imagine taking a big bite of a cheese sandwich. In that moment, you start one of the most amazing journeys in your body. It is called digestion, and its job is to break food into pieces so tiny that your blood can carry them to every cell.
• The journey begins in your mouth. Your teeth chop and grind the bread, and saliva makes it soft and slippery. Saliva also starts turning starch into sugar. When you swallow, muscles in a tube called the esophagus squeeze the food down toward your stomach. These muscles work so well that astronauts can swallow while floating in space!
• Your stomach is a stretchy, muscular bag. It churns the food for a few hours and mixes it with strong juices until it becomes a thick paste.
• Next comes the small intestine. It is not small at all: in an adult, it is about six meters long, coiled up neatly in the belly. Its walls are covered with millions of tiny, finger-like bumps called villi. Nutrients from the food pass through the villi into the blood.
• Whatever your body cannot use moves into the large intestine, where water is soaked back up. The leftovers leave your body as waste. From first bite to the very end, the trip can take a day or more.
• 1. Where does digestion begin?
• 2. Name two things saliva does.
• 3. What does the word 'nutrients' mean in paragraph 4?
• 4. Why do you think millions of villi help the small intestine do its job?
• 5. Copy the sentence that shows the small intestine's name is surprising.
• 6. What is the author's purpose: to inform, to entertain or to persuade? Explain.