Week 5 — Tissues
Why this matters
A future nurse drawing blood and a lab technician reading a stained slide both work with this week's four tissue types, the fabrics every organ is sewn from.
In plain language
Your body is not built straight from cells. Cells first team up into tissues (groups of similar cells that sit together and share one job), and only then do tissues team up into organs. There are four kinds of tissue, and each one has a job you can say with a verb: cover, support, move, or communicate. This week you learn to look at a slice of the body under a microscope and say which kind of tissue you are seeing, and why its build fits its job. That skill is called histology (the study of tissues under the microscope), and you will use it to read every organ for the rest of this course.
- Already covered: Weeks 3 and 4 gave you the cell, diffusion, and proteins such as collagen.
- This week: the four tissue types, epithelium's two-word name, connective tissue, the three muscle tissues, and the four membranes.
- How they connect: a tissue is cells plus what they build around themselves.
- Where we're going next: Week 6, The Integumentary System, sews all four tissues into the skin.
Focus
Can you read any organ as a mix of four tissue types, and say why each is built the way it is?
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- [ ] name the four tissue types and the verb for each
- [ ] give an epithelium its two-word name, layers first
- [ ] explain why blood is a connective tissue
- [ ] tell the three muscle tissues apart on a slide
To-do
Plan your week
- Read Chapter 5 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
- Work the tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
- Do the A&P Lab & Inquiry (two hours), the discussion, and the assignment.
- Take the quiz.
This week's checkpoint: name a slide of one flat layer of cells, in the order type, subtype, location, function.
You've got this
Ask your instructor early if you get stuck.
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