Classification and Adaptations Year 7-8

Connect  

Use the activities in the Teaching Guide (below) to spark students’ curiosity before their zoo visit.

Connect and Understand 

Analyse skulls, explore artefacts and visit zoo exhibits to understand the complex world of animal classification and adaptation. Students can use their newfound understanding of animal classification to organise the diversity of the animal kingdom at Melbourne Zoo. Students will learn how their understanding of animal adaptations and classification can help them to save wildlife. 

Your zoo visit will include: Introduction (for arrivals between 9:40am – 10am), Zoo Teacher workshop (40 minutes) and keeper talks. Check out your Teaching Guide for other ideas of what to do at the zoo. 

Understand 

Use activities in the Teaching Guide to deepen students’ learning back at school. 

Act 

Use the Teaching Guide to enable students to master their knowledge and skills in real-world contexts. 

There are differences within and between groups of organisms; classification helps organise this diversity (VCSSU091)  

• Students will learn about classification systems and, through facilitated observations of organisms living and once living, note the differences and classify in a range of ways  

Interactions between organisms can be described in terms of food chains and food webs and can be affected by human activity (VCSSU093)  

• Students will learn about the fragile nature of food webs, the roles of predators, prey and primary consumers and how humans can have a positive and negative environmental impact on these  

Identify, analyse and explain interconnections within places and between places and identify and explain changes resulting from these interconnections (VCGGC101)  

• Students will learn about the impact of humans on places, habitats and ecosystems and what effect these impacts may have