Aquarium Igniter!
By Lisa Dixon | Posted: Wednesday February 17, 2016
This term all Year 8 classes are using the Rocky Seashore to ignite our integrated topic into looking at structures and adaptations for plants and animals to aid their survival.
Today we took part in two sessions at the Aquarium. The first session was called 'Supper in the Sea" and we looked at the links in the Food web - taking a closer look at producers, grazers, filter feeders, predators and scavengers that live in our local waters. Some of the amazing creatures we looked at included the whelk with a radula drill like tongue that can drill through shells, the apricot sea star that predates on cockles and other shell animals clasping them, tearing them open , pushing out it's stomach and slurping up the inside animal. We looked at the sea cucumber who avoids being eaten by playing 'dead", and the half crab who filters food out of the water with net like mouth pieces!
The second half of the afternoon was looking at the spiny dogfish shark using our scientific investigation skills to identify senses, look at physical features and behaviour adaptations, and then dissecting the fish to look at it's internal special features. Most coped with the smell and the unfamiliar task of dissection. We analysed the stomach to find evidence of what it had been eating. One highlight was the discovery of some baby sharks inside still attached to their feeding sack.
A big thank you to our parents - Tania, Nicky, Angus and Russ.
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