Smooth or Striated?

by Greg Crowther

This overview of muscle tissue diversity was originally written for Biology 241 at South Seattle College.

Is it smooth or striated?
Smooth or striated?
Smooth or striated?
Smooth or striated?

Your biceps' two parts?
The walls of your heart?
The walls of your veins?
The difference is plain!

They are smooth or striated.
Smooth or striated.
Smooth or striated.
Smooth or striated.

• MP3 (demo)

• sheet music (with melody play-back)

Songs like this one can be used during class meetings and/or in homework assignments. Either way, the song will be most impactful if students DO something with it, as opposed to just listening.

An initial, simple follow-up activity could be to answer the study questions below. A more extensive interaction with the song might entail (A) learning to sing it, using an audio file and/or sheet music as a guide, and/or (B) illustrating it with pictures, bodily poses, and/or bodily movements. The latter activity could begin with students identifying the most important or most challenging content of the song, and deciding how to illustrate that particular content.

For this particular song, kinesthetic movements could include smooth horizontal hand-sweeps to represent smooth muscles and "painting" of vertical stripes to represent striated muscles.

(1) Are skeletal muscles like your biceps smooth or striated?

(2) Is cardiac muscle smooth or striated?

(3) Are muscles in the walls of blood vessels smooth or striated?