We are finished building our beaks and are now going to be testing them to see how well our design actually works. I had students collect as much cereal as they could using their design in a 30 second chunk of time without scooping. We completed 4 trials each, recording how much cereal they collected for each trial. Then I asked the kids to switch food types- they now had to use their beak to collect the other source of food. Upon trying to "eat" the other cereal students realized that their beaks were not very good at picking up the opposite type of cereal. If they had designed their beak to pick up rice crispies and now needed to pick up fruit loops, it didn't necessarily worked. We discussed how this is related to real life when a certain food source disappears and animals have to adapt (change) to eat the new food source and how some animals die out becasue they are unable to pick up the food. In this model students saw that many of their birds would die becasue they were unable to eat any food. Finally we introduced an additional food source (cheetohs) to the island and students discovered that the bird designed to eat the fruit loops were able to pick up the cheetohs because they were also large whereas the birds designed to eat rice crispies still ended up dying becasue they weren't able to pick up any food. The pictures below are of the kids collecting data with their beaks! |
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Ms. LohitsaLover of ALL things science and engineering! Guided Questions:
1) What makes something living? 2) What makes something nonliving? 3) What do plants and animals need to survive? 4) How do plants and animals adapt to changes in their environment? 5) What are the stages a living thing goes through in their lifespan? Vocabulary:
living nonliving energy parent reproduce survive environment grow light behavior offspring soil life span life cycle pollinators pollination plant animal Categories |