Year 3 Animal Scientists

 Today, Year 3 continued to learn about Fungus, Bacteria and Invertebrates.  We wondered about what invertebrates were, but realised we needed to take a step back and first think about how scientists group all animals.

We thought about how we might group some animals. 

Nanami said, "You can look at the shape of the animal like the horse and the zebra belong in the same group.  They both have hooves but are different species". 

Alice added, "Some things look different, but they can go in the same group because they are part of that group because they have other things that are the same.  Just because they look different, they can go in the same group."

To group animals, we have to think about their characteristics.  

For example, what characteristics does a flamingo have?

Thea: "It lives in a pond, it has feathers and a beak"

What does a rainbow trout have?

"Small teeth, rainbow scales, fins, eat small stuff, and they hatch from eggs." Dylan

We worked through an interactive Mystery Science to group animals by their characteristics. 

It was fun to think about all the ways so many animals are the same and different.  Some challenges to group were hippos, tarantulas, platypus and pangolins.

We found out that animals without bones are called invertebrates.

We also found out there are over 33,000 different invertebrate species in New Zealand. 

How cool is that!

Room 27 recorded a few in our inquiry books.