The Night Shift in Your Bones: teacher key

How You Grow, grade 8 edition, written for 8th grade. The body releases more growth hormone in deep sleep. Follow it through bones, growth spurts and the charts doctors use.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. When does most growth hormone release happen?
   • During deep sleep (answer)
   • During exercise
   • During breakfast
2. What is true about growing pains?
   • They are worse during growth spurts
   • They are not worse during growth spurts (answer)
   • They are felt at the growth areas of bones
3. Why is a growth plate easier to injure than solid bone?
   • It is weaker than solid bone (answer)
   • It is on the outside of the body
   • It has no cartilage
4. What does the word spurts mean?
   • Slow, steady stretches
   • Faster stretches of growing (answer)
   • Types of bones
5. Why do doctors use separate growth charts for girls and boys?
   • Girls and boys grow in different patterns and at different rates (answer)
   • Girls and boys never grow
   • Boys are always bigger

Words

• cartilage: rubbery body material
• collagen: bone framework protein
• percentile: chart position line
• spurts: quick bursts