Reviews skin and touch organs for students and includes challenging questions during presentation.

1. Skin and Touch: The
Sensory System
By Dean Berry, Ed. D.
The Teaches’ Library

2. Using our skin and the sense of touch enables us to
interact with our environment. Skin is the largest organ
in our body and weighs more than 20 pounds for an
average size adult.

3. Wrinkled skin can be gorgeous.
Don’t you think so?

4. Perhaps wrinkled skin looks best on dogs and not
so great on others. What are the factors
that wrinkle skin on humans?

5. What’s up with these wrinkled fingers?
What do you think happened?

6. Having beautiful skin is admired in American culture.
Why do you think these ladies have
great looking skin?

7. Men and women spend billions of dollars every year to
care for their skin. What kind of products are
usually purchased? Are there any
precautions that should be taken?

8. Our skin is a very durable tissue that provides a
protective layer around our bones, muscles, and
organs. What’s under your skin?

9. Our skeletal system along with our skin holds us
together.

10. Watch this gif and observe how our organs are held
inside our body by skin tissue. If sometimes you feel
like you are falling apart, it’s probably mental rather
than physical. Can you name any of these organs?

11. Modern medical miracles have made it possible to provide a facial
transplant for patients with severely burned skin. Deceased donors can
offer victims hope for their future. Other than skin tissue, what
else do you think is being transplanted in this procedure?

12. We usually think of skin as a type of saran wrap like we use in
our kitchens. However, upon very close examination, our skin is
a very complex organ and serves a variety of functions. Can
you name some functions that occur
within our skin tissue?

13. One of the most prominent features on the
surface of our skin is hair. On some areas of our
skin, we have hair follicles with oil glands
(sebaceous glands).

14. Our skin is composed of three layers. The outer layer is the epidermis which
contains dead skin cells and melanin. Melanin is the substance that protects the
outer skin from the suns rays and provides color to the epidermis. The second
layer is the dermis which is quite thick and contains a dense supply of capillaries.
Underneath the dermis is the fatty layer which provides a cushion for the skin as it
encounters pressure.

15. Let’s review
Can you name the three layers of the skin?
Which layers contains the most blood vessels?

16. The sense of touch is extremely important for our
survival. Failure to feel pain or recognize physical threats
to our body can easily result in life threatening damage.
Can you give an example of what might
happen if we could not feel pressure or pain?

17. Being tickled is a good example of how sensitive our skin
is to touch. Our body has over three million nerve
receptors that can receive a stimulus and send a
message to the brain. Are you ticklish?

18. Even Elmo must have millions of nerve receptors.

19. Our sense of touch alerts us about our how our
body contacts the environment. Failure to correctly
identify a feeling on your arm could be deadly.

20. Pain and Temperature

24. Pain Travels from nerve receptors to
the brain at unbelievable speed.

25. Once pain is inflicted on a finger, neurons
communicate with other neurons as the nerve
impulse is sent through the peripheral nervous
system, up the spinal cord, and to the brain.

26. The cerebral cortex and the thalamus structures of the
brain process pain that it is transmitted by neurons. The
neurotransmitter dopamine can act to diminish the pain
level experienced in the brain.

27. The sun’s rays are very damaging to our skin. Although
melanin protects our skin, more than ten minutes in the
sun still begins to create damage.

28. It only takes one ore two serious sun burns to increase a person’s risk
for skin cancer. Applying generous amounts of sunblock with UVA and
UVB which has a SPF rating of 30 or higher is a great way to protect
your skin from damage.

29. People who spend a lot of time in the sun develop very
wrinkled skin as they age. They end up looking much
older than people the same age that do not get too
much sun.

30. The most frightening possible outcome from too much
exposure to the sun is the development of malignant
skin growths. What is meant by malignant?

31. Group Discussion
Meet in groups and discuss the following.
• 1. What are the three layers of our skin and what are their
• functions?
• 2. How does the sense of touch work?
• 3. Why do we need to protect our skin?

32. Prepare to Write
Write an explanatory essay describing the
layers our skin and how the skin works.
Describe various skin problems and how to
avoid or reduce problems.