Create a Critter: Animal Adaptation Design Challenge

Students will:

• Design and create a cardboard version of a local animal with moving parts.

• Bring movement to their animal that replicates the way it moves in the environment using Roto-Ring or robotics.

• Recognise that different animals have different adaptations that suit their particular environment. 

• Develop critical thinking, problem-solving and help-seeking skills to navigate challenges that may arise when creating their animal.

Students can:

• Design and construct a cardboard animal local to their area.

• Utilise Roto-Ring or robotics to bring movement to their creation.

• Creatively use the provided materials to represent an animal adaptation. 

• Respond to the prompt and challenges that arise throughout the activity using critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

Adaptation, habitat, extinction, camouflage, mimicry

The Stanford Design Thinking Process helps solve complex problems with creative solutions.

We've broken down the process to support you when engaging with your Makedo Design Challenge here.

Creativity and innovation: Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
a. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
b. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression

• 3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing,

• 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.

• 3- LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.

• 4- LS1-2 Use a model to describe that animals receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways. 

• MS-LS4-2  Apply scientific ideas to construct an explanation for the anatomical similarities and differences among modern organisms and between modern and fossil organisms to infer evolutionary relationships.

• MS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence that describes how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some individuals’ probability of surviving and reproducing in a specific environment.

The student is expected to:

• Science 1.13 A Identify the external structures of different animals and compare how those structures help different animals live, move, and meet basic needs for survival;

• Science 2.13 B  Record and compare how the structures and behaviors of animals help them find and take in food, water, and air;

• Science 3.12 A Explain how temperature and precipitation affect animal growth and behavior through migration and hibernation and plant responses through dormancy;

• Science 3.12 C Describe how natural changes to the environment such as floods and droughts cause some organisms to thrive and others to perish or move to new locations;

• Science 3.13 A Explore and explain how external structures and functions of animals such as a neck of a giraffe or webbed feet on a duck enable them to survive in their environment;

• Science 5.12 A Observe and describe how a variety of organisms survive by interacting with biotic and abiotic factors in a healthy ecosystem;

• Science 5.13 A Analyze the structures and functions of different species to identify how organisms survive in the same environment;

Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6):

• Recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways

• Explore and use classification keys to help group, identify and name a variety of living things in their local and wider environment

• Identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution

Key Stage 3 (Years 7-9)

• The variation between species and between individuals of the same species means some organisms compete more successfully, which can drive natural selection

• Changes in the environment may leave individuals within a species, and some entire species, less well adapted to compete successfully and reproduce, which in turn may lead to extinction

Cycle Two (Grades 3-4)

• Characteristics, needs, organisation, and transformations of living things

• How animals move

Cycle Three (Grades 5-6)

• The environment (eg, habitats, populations, relationships between living things, and adaptations)

  • Animal adaptations: beaks, mouths and neck

  • Animal adaptations: skins and body coverings

  • Animal adaptations: feet and limbs

Secondary Science and Technology (Cycle One- Grade 7-8)

• Physical and Behavioural Adaptations

• Theory of the Evolution of Species