Species Interactions

As we start to consider ideas relating to our new unit of inquiry “Human activities can challenge plant and animal survival”, we decided to start by learning about species and habitats in our own backyard. 2R students borrowed a stack of iPads from kindergarten and headed out to the nearby park.

In partners, they had a simple instruction: “Look for interactions between species in their habitat”. Students have been very interested in insects, as well as our growing tadpoles, so there’s a lot to inquire into right nearby!

A day later, after a quick orientation to Keynote slideshow-making, students worked with their partners to select the three images they thought best showed species interactions. They then presented these to the rest of the class.

Students made many interesting comments regarding each other’s presentations. Much focus was on the use of language. Students spoke about wanting to be clear whether what we wrote about the interactions we observed was our interpretation or a fact. Many suggestions included adding language like “I think that… ” or “Maybe” to our descriptions on the slides.

Have a look at our observations of species interactions!