Living Things Don’t Exist in Isolation

Progressing towards the Level 3 standard

This focus idea is explored through:

• Contrasting student and scientific views
• Critical teaching ideas
• Teaching activities
• Further resources

Contrasting student and scientific views

Student everyday experiences
Younger students tend to think of animals as individuals rather than focusing on populations or interactions.

Research: Tytler & Hubber (2004)

By the end of Year 2 students may begin to understand that animals of the same species have similar internal parts and offspring.

Research: Keil (1989)

Younger students interpret animal behaviour in terms of human emotions and motivations (for example, they believe the spider is ‘scared’, the rabbit ‘likes’ to live in burrows, the bird protecting its nest is ‘angry’), rather than seeing the behaviours as adaptive.

Research: Tytler & Hubber (2004)

Young students can understand simple food links involving two organisms, yet they often think of organisms like family pets as independent of each other, but dependent on people to supply them with food and shelter.

Research: Leach, Driver, Scott & Wood-Robinson (1995)

Scientific view

Every living thing is linked, directly or indirectly, with a multitude of others in an ecosystem. There is an interrelationship between organisms and their environment which affects their distribution, abundance and survival, (for example, bees pollinate flowers and flowers rely on this for reproduction, while bees rely on flowers for food).

The world contains a wide variety of physical conditions, living and non-living, which create a wide variety of environments: freshwater, marine, forest, desert, grassland, mountain and others. In any particular environment the growth and survival of organisms depends on the physical conditions.

Critical teaching ideas

• The behaviour of organisms and their interaction with other organisms assists their survival.
  
  
• Organisms have a variety of body parts and structures that assist their survival by making or finding food, finding shelter and reproducing.
  
  
• Organisms of the same type interact with one another and with other organisms in various ways. Some examples are parent/child and feeding relationships, the dependence of many plants on animals for carrying their pollen to other plants or for dispersing their seeds and the dependence of animals on plants for food
  
  

Explore the relationships between ideas about living things and their interactions in the Concept Development Maps – (DNA and Inherited Characteristics, Flow of Energy in Ecosystems, Natural Selection)

To build up a concept of the relationship between structure and function, students need to be exposed to a range of organisms within their habitats.

Teaching activities

Collect evidence/data for analysis
Encourage students to investigate conditions necessary for plant growth. One approach is to have them develop suitable questions for investigation such as:

• will seeds grow in the dark?
• do plants like salty water?
• will seeds grow without water?

Students can determine what conditions they will change and what features of the plant they will measure. Encourage students to make and record observations using drawings in science journals or to make a visual record of germination and early growth using digital cameras.

Students can observe birds in the playground; they should watch how they interact with other birds and try to work out how they find food and shelter. They should infer how these behaviours assist in their survival. Such an activity can be extended by a trip to a zoo or nearby wetlands.

Provide an open problem that can be explored via play
Set students the task of designing a ‘theme park’ for ‘minibeasts’ where they consider the features and structure of the animals in order to design rides, slides and amusements for them. For example a slater (or rolly polly) might prefer a long tube through which it can roll when curled up in a ball.

When designing the rides, students should be encouraged to consider the impact of the animals’ structural features. For example, if animals have wings, how could these structures be used or protected in designing a ride or slide for them?

Focus students’ attention on overlooked detail
Provide students with hand lenses and encourage them to collect a variety of insects and plants from the local school yard. Using the hand lenses, have students observe how the animals move and have them identify common features such as antennae, legs, abdomen and head. Encourage students to carefully observe and record various body structures and functions. They should relate these structures to the animals’ habitat and everyday function and survival. Have students look closely at the underneath of leaves for caterpillars, lerps, scale, aphids or other insects which may use the leaf as a source of food or protection.

Promote reflection on and clarification of existing ideas and challenge some existing ideas
The River Story captures the journey of a river as it moves from catchment to sea and is shared with students as a class story. Students add various items to the river as the story is told. The purpose of the resource is to demonstrate the impact of human intervention and natural processes such as erosion on water quality. The activity can be adapted to follow the life of a particular organism within the waterway, such as a platypus. Students can discuss the impact of the changes on the organism’s survival, how the impact on the waterway could be reduced and how our behaviour impacts on our waterways. The River Story website provides a story outline and equipment needed.

• The River Story activity
  http://www.qld.waterwatch.org.au/resources/storyofariver.html

Further resources

The following resources contain sections that may be useful when designing learning experiences:

Digilearn*

• Garden detective: explore an Australian garden – Students are encouraged to recognise that that the environment contains many living and non-living things too small to be seen clearly without magnification and to appreciate the diversity of plants and animals.
  http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/dlr/_layouts/dlr/details.aspx?ID=3244

• Create a creature – Students explore the basic features of animals by designing small invertebrates using different body parts. They analyse the needs of a small invertebrate and relate them to body structure and function.
  http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/dlr/_layouts/dlr/details.aspx?ID=4845

Primary Connections

• Plants in Action – In this module, teachers are guided to scaffold students’ exploration of the interdependence of living things on each other. There is a particular focus on the dependence on plants for the source of oxygen, foods, medicines etc.
  http://www.science.org.au/primaryconnections/plantsinaction.htm

* Note that Digilearn is a secure site; DoE login required.