Creepy Critter Classification

Presentation of Creepy Critter background

Essential Question: How do scientists classify living organisms?
Learning Target: I can classify organisms according to taxonomy.

Your Task:
The lead scientist sends you illustrations of the organisms and asks you to help develop this classification system. Your
role is to study the illustrations and come up with a possible classification scheme based on the information provided
about each organism. You'll be asked to explain to the scientific team how and why you organized the creatures this way.
The cards of the creepy critters are at your station. (also scroll to the bottom of this page if you are at home)

1. Study all the cards except the last four, noting similarities and differences among the creatures. Create a table on
your paper to help organize what you see. You might have columns to describe bristles, antennae, eyes, etc. You
might want to number your cards to help keep track of which you're describing.

2. Now put the cards (except the four you've kept separate) into groups based on the similarities and/or differences
you see. Each group should include creatures that have something in common. Now create a new table, listing
the traits common to each group you've made.

3. Choose one of the cards from the four you've kept separate. This is a picture of a creature that was just beamed
back by the space probe and sent to you by the lead scientist. You need to decide where it fits in the group
system you've just created. Do you need to make a new group for this creature or can you find some way to fit it
into one of your existing groups?

Reflection..
1. Write a brief paragraph explaining your classification scheme, how it works and how easy or hard it is to
fit new creatures into it.
The first thing we did to classify are aliens is by head shape, then we went by how many eyes we
had, then we went by if they had star things in their stomach, with or without spikes it does not matter,
then we did if they had no spikes at all, and then we did if they had 3 eyes and nothing else, then we
looked at if they had antennas and hair on their right leg then we went by if they had any similarity or
not

2. Why do we classify things?

To make it easier to find things that are similar

3. Is your way the only way possible to organize the critter cards?
No

4. Do you happen to know the biological classification scheme used by scientists who study living things?
Yes we know some of them but not all
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