Explore the diversity of animals in Acadia and learn about the remarkable adaptations that help them survive! From tongues to tails, we will take a close look and learn wild facts about some local Maine creatures.
Length: 45 minutes
Maine Standards:
E1 Biodiversity
Grades 3-5 Students compare living things based on their behaviors, external features, and environmental needs.
Describe how living things can be sorted in many ways, depending on which features or behaviors are used to sort them, and apply this understanding to sort living things.
Describe the changes in external features and behaviors of an organism during its life cycle.
Grades 6-8 Students differentiate among organisms based on biological characteristics and identify patterns of similarity.
Compare physical characteristics that differentiate organisms into groups (including plants that use sunlight to make their own food, animals that consume energy-rich food, and organisms that cannot easily be classified as either).
Explain how biologists use internal and external anatomical features to determine relatedness among organisms and to form the basis for classification systems.
Explain ways to determine whether organisms are the same species.
Describe how external and internal structures of animals and plants contribute to the variety of ways organisms are able to find food and reproduce.
E2 Ecosystems
Grades 3-5 Students describe ways organisms depend upon, interact within, and change the living and non-living environment as well as ways the environment affects organisms.
Explain how changes in an organism's habitat can influence its survival.
Describe some of the ways in which organisms depend on one another, including animals carrying pollen and dispersing seeds.
Explain how organisms can affect the environment in different ways.
Grades 6-8 Students examine how the characteristics of the physical, non-living (abiotic) environment, the types and behaviors of living (biotic) organisms, and the flow of matter and energy affect organisms and the ecosystem of which they are part.
List various kinds of resources within different biomes for which organisms compete.
Describe ways in which two types of organisms may interact (including competition, predator/prey, producer/consumer/decomposer, parasitism, and mutualism) and describe the positive and negative consequences of such interactions.
Next Generation Science Standards
3-LS4-3. Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all. [Clarification Statement: Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the organisms and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.]
LS4.C: Adaptation: For any particular environment, some kinds of organisms survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.
Goals:
Students will learn about the diversity of animal species in Acadia and the adaptations that help them survive.
Objectives: Students will be able to:
Identify 6 species of animals that live in ANP and at least one adaptation that each animal possesses and how it helps them survive.
Essential Question: How do adaptations help animals survive?
