Classification and ecosystems

[linotas]

Does anyone have any interesting classification pracs for year 7's besides the usually classification web posters? I have a teacher who has never taught bio before wanting ideas. He was going to get them to do an octopus dissection and demo a salmon dissection to compare vertebrates and invertebrates but is not confident enough to do that on a day I am not here. Unfortunately his yr 7 doubles are days I do not work.

[sunray18]

Not sure if this fits in with what you want:
we have a set of gear for the students to sort out..
Broken Tiles: of all differnet types from paving to ceramic of different colours, even those that have rough surface and smooth surface.. so they have to sort out the diffrerent types then the sub-classification of colours, or of smooth vs rough
Marbles: Different sizes and different colours
Glass Beads: different sizes, shapes , colours.
Corks: rubber and cork of different sizes, and some with one hole or two holes..

does that help?
Match sticks and Paddle pop sticks: all colours. have to sort paddle pop and matchsticks then into colours..

[lygray]

We do a similiar prac to sunray only we use dry pasta - can be sorted into different sizes, colours, shapes. it is inexpensive and can be used again.

[Ian]

We do the dry pasta too. We then move on to the bottled biological specimens!

Ian

[smiley]

I have a bucket of plastic animals, purchased from toys shops, Big W etc, and a real minimum of laminated photos of those things that never make to the plastic animal genre - like protists. Although you can find some pretty cool greeblies as stuffed toys from Southern Biological. Plus one or two bottled specimens, like some varieties of nematodes that I have jugged over the years. I have sorted them into sets, and have them stored into lunchboxes, in a big plastic tub. I have a lovely cladogram for the kids to use to sort their animals. It uses an either/or model to get down to individuals.

It's a real winner! It's tactile, for all those kids who like to "DO" to learn, it's funny - because it's plastic animals, and it makes them think e.g. a whale is a mammal, not a fish. I usually make a bit of a joke about how we all know lions aren't really baby-cak green and plastic, so the kids have to consider what they already know about the animals, e.g. they have fur, live young etc before they sort them.

[linotas]

Thanks everyone. Sounds really similar to what I have suggested to him
But you know, first year out teachers wanting to impress........

[smiley]

Thought I'd attach this for folks to look at.

[LabMad]

we have a simply bucket of buttons, they have one, two and four holes, different colors and sizes, some are old/new, shiny/dull, metal/plastic
good luck and there are some interesting ideas here too, thanks

[JelJane]

I have been known to be out collecting insects from my garden at 7am for this... slaters, spiders (the bigger the better in a boys school, luckily 99% are non-poisonous here in NZ), stick insects, wetas, worms, and snails as well as going to the supermarket and purchasing 2 prawns, 2 shellfish etc. Also have a collection of preserved specimens, lizard, baby bird, bees and moths to use. Have used plant specimens as well - moss, pinecone, flowering plant, fern, succulent, cactus etc.

[sunray18]

Giant Microbes have bugs as fluffy toys- you can but all sorts of dieases
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/

[Labbie]

We also use the buttons