Classification

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To understand how different environments work, scientists first need to know what kinds of plants and animals are living in those environments. Scientists have developed a system of classification called ‘taxonomy’ whereby animals and plants are grouped according to their physical characteristics such as legs, arms, tentacles, claws, shell types and internal organ structure.

Contents

Resources

Lesson suggestions:
1. Artificial or natural items?
2. Alive or dead?
3. Plants or animals:
4. Vertebrates and invertebrates
5. Grouping sea creatures
6. Walk on the beach

Resources:

If you are near a coastal area, try collecting items from the beach and use them for classification exercises with your students. Or use some model sea creatures. Alternatively, use the pictures provided here. The images on this cd are grouped according to major groups of marine creatures, which should assist your own professional development.

Set up a computer and data projector and show your students these beautiful pictures, or print out colour pictures so that your students can try to group things by what they look like. Become familiar with the invertebrates in particular, some of them will be unfamiliar to you and it will help the students if you have seen some of these things before. There are many online resources that can help with this too.

It is strongly recommended that you check out the Jewels of the Sea kits. These kits come in both primary and middle years versions. They contain everything you need to run a marine education program for weeks. There are teacher guides, reference books, videos, DVDs, puppets, posters (as a separate poster kit), beach combing items, shells and much more.

1. Artificial or natural items?

You will need…
Artificial items such as:
• plastic bottles,
• string,
• felt pens,
• tables & chairs,
• clothes
• anything in your classroom that is human-made.

Natural items such as:
• plants or plant matter from the school yard
• shells
• seaweed
• sponges
• pictures of living natural things (from books & magazines)

a. Arrange students around the objects.
b. Involve students in classifying the objects: natural or human-made.
c. What other human-made or natural objects are in the room?
d. What are the differences are between human-made and natural things?

2. Alive or dead?

Many students, when asked to group a variety of items, will often have a group for ‘dead’ but not one for ‘alive’. It is a significant issue for primary students.

You will need…
• Prepare your students to go outside.
• Shells, sticks

Take your students for a walk around the school yard to see what they can identify as being living or dead among the natural things they find. It might be easy for them to identify living things such as plants, birds and insects. Try using the concept of ‘once-living’ and ‘never living’.

Then introduce the shells and dead sticks. Will your students identify these as living or dead? Ensure that the distinction between what is living now and what was living is clear. Scientists do not use this distinction for classification, but it is important that your students understand the difference.

3. Plants or animals?

Once students have mastered these major starting points, move onto classification of natural things. It is easy to start with the difference between plants and animals as these are within the daily experience of students.

You will need…
• Shells
• Feathers
• Crab shells
• Sea sponges
• Plant matter (e.g. twigs, grass, leaves)
• Seaweed (if you can get some, or pictures if you cannot)

First - ask your students to group the items according to either plant or animal. See what happens.

Ask your students what they think are the differences between plants and animals. Use the whiteboard to write down the correct answers. Put plants on one side and animals on the other. Use the information below to help you if you are unsure.

Characteristics of plants:

• They don’t ‘move’; this is a common suggestion from students. Of course plants grow in one place and don’t move about like many animals, but there are some animals that cannot move about so this is not a good characteristic.
• They use the sunlight to get energy and grow; this is the most important factor that distinguishes plants from animals. Animals cannot do this.
• They have leaves, roots and flowers.
• They produce seeds to reproduce.

Characteristics of animals:

• They eat plants or other animals to get energy and grow.
• Some animals are able to move about by walking, flying or swimming. But it is important that students understand that some animals cannot move about, such as adult sea squirts and sponges. When sea squirts and sponges are in a larval stage they do swim about, but eventually settle on a hard surface and grow into the adult form attached to that surface.
• Animals can give live birth to babies, or reproduce by laying eggs.
• Most animals have complex internal organs such as a heart, lungs/gills, kidneys, liver and intestines.

A phonetic guide to pronunciation for some of the more difficult names is provided here:

• Algae = algee (hard ‘g’)
• Cnidaria = nydaria (silent ‘c’)
• Echinoderms - ekynoderms

4. Vertebrates and Invertebrates (Y3-5)

When you move on to looking at groups of animals, the difference between vertebrate and invertebrate animals is a major one to scientists and will be very useful for your students to know.

It is simple - anything with a spine is a vertebrate (in the sea there is a major exception that is mentioned in the coloured box on the next page). Your spine is made of vertebrae (plural; the singular is vertebra).

You will need…
• Whiteboard & pens
• Picture or model of a skeleton
• (Optional) Shells, sponges, models or pictures of invertebrate sea creatures such as crabs, starfish, etc.

a) Ask your students to identify the spine.
b) Get your students to feel their own spine. Because they have a spine, this means they are a vertebrate animal. What other vertebrate animals can they name?
c) Many animals that live in the sea do NOT have a spine and therefore they are invertebrate animals.
d) Divide the whiteboard in two and label one side ‘vertebrates’ and the other side ‘invertebrates’ (see table below) to start making lists of each.

Use this box for a reference for the sea creatures.

5. Grouping sea creatures

You will need…
Either images or models/toys of sea creatures
Feathers
Shells (usually easy to come by)
Bags or boxes (one per group)
To be familiar with the invertebrate groups listed in the table on page 4; use the colour images in this package to help.

This exercise is incredibly flexible in its delivery. This is merely a suggested guideline.

a) This exercise works best in small groups of 3-4 students each. Into each bag or box, place several (up to about 8) diverse sea creatures as models and/or images.
b) Ask your students to group the specimens and photos according to their own made up groups. Give the students enough time for this.
c) When time is up, go round each group and ask a spokesperson to tell the class about how they grouped their items. There is no right or wrong. They may do it as images vs models, or living vs dead, or vertebrates vs invertebrates, or carnivores and herbivores and so on.
d) Ask them to swap tables or bags/boxes. This time ask the students to groups things according to vertebrate and invertebrates.
e) See how they’ve done. Correct any misconceptions. For example, sharks, seahorses and seadragons are often not counted as fish, but they definitely are and should be grouped with the vertebrates.
f) Ask the students to swap tables or bags/boxes again. This time ask the students to group the animals into more specific animal groups decided by you, such as birds, fish, mammals, sponges, shells, crabs, etc. The six invertebrate groups provided in the table on page 5 are enough to begin with.
g) This time take a while to go around each group and look in detail at their categorisation efforts. Again ask one of the students to discuss their grouping with the class. What were they not sure about? Did they have a group of unknown items? Once you and the students are happy with their classification, ask the students to produce something that communicates their groups in drawing and writing. Either individual pictures or a group poster to which everyone in the group contributes. Make sure that you have written the names of each group clearly on the board for students to copy and provide them with a phonetic guide.

6. Walk on the Beach

You will need…
To organise a school field trip
Plastic bags for rubbish & collecting natural objects
Plastic gloves & tongs for picking up litter
Buckets (optional)
Identification guide (optional)
Whistle (optional)
Digital camera (optional)

If your school is near the coast, take your students for a walk on the beach to do some ‘live’ classification. Students not only love the beach but they love discovering beach washed items. This can be as open or as structured as you wish. Here is a suggested activity.

OHS&W: Students must not to touch sharp man-made objects such as glass, metal, needles, etc. If students see litter they must use plastic gloves and/or tongs to pick it up and take it to a teacher with a plastic bag specifically for rubbish. Make it a common practice with your students that when you are in any natural environment, you automatically take rubbish-collecting equipment and take whatever rubbish you find. Students must not enter the water unless you have specific permission from parents/guardians to do so.

a) Give your students 10-15 minutes to wander in groups with buckets collecting natural objects from the beach.
b) Gather students in a circle (on a dry part of the beach, but not in dunes) and put their collected items in front of them.
c) Each group tells the rest of the class what they have found and what animal group they think it belongs to.
d) As the groups go around they start making groups of animals in the centre of the circle, e.g. one for sponges, one for molluscs, one for crustaceans, etc. Put a circle in the sand for each animal group.
e) Help students with the identification guide if they want further information about what they have collected.

Ensure that students return their collected items to the beach and do not take anything home in pockets! All the beach washed items will become food or home for other animals, so it must be left on the beach. Instead, encourage the students to take photographs for later follow up.

NB: Some groups of marine organisms are notoriously difficult to identify even for the experts, especially when they have been drying out on the shore. Three groups that are frequently misidentified are the sponges, ascidians and bryozoans. Take good, close pictures and see if you can find a local expert who might be able to help.