Week Four - Field Session

Environmental Explorers-Week 4 Summary [17^th August]

Topic: What are the living things there? Who lives in the stream and why?

We started of this week’s session reviewing what we had done last time

Looking at things in a scientific way – magnifying and measuring

Questions?

How many metres in a km?  1000 metres

Why is a butterfly’s body fluffy? – we still couldn’t get answer and we decided to do some further research on this.

We also reviewed our safety rules

We explained how scientists group things – we grouped our own foot wear using bare foot, gum boots as the main groups. Then we looked at the difference between Abiotic / Biotic –- around into the trees and bushes, by the creek. Like a treasure hunt with clip board and listing living [biotic] and non-living things [abiotic] things. We got some really cool things – we asked what other category could we use? Some man made things came up?

W then looked at Biotic things animals, plants, fungi bacteria – most specifically animals - List all the animals that you can think of that live here

Consider the scientific grouping – what’s the difference – back bone –

-       vertebrate (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians)

-       invertebrate (85% of all creatures, beetles, spiders)

We then went on to look at the animals in the stream – mostly invertebrates

Finding Macro Invertebrates in the stream – we used a range of equipment – magnifying glasses, nets and trays to sort out the animals. There was many invertebrates that went back to class to show the rest of the group

Key Wondering:

What can we say about the health of the stream?

Debrief; overview of scientific category’s and the invertebrates we have found –

What is Abiotic / biotic?

What is an invertebrate?

What was your favourite thing we saw today?