: Bird Beaks
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Approach:  Station Level: Year 4 and year 8
Focus: Adaptation 
Resources: Computer program on laptop computer
1.4Mb

Questions/instructions:

This activity is done on the computer.
Click on the button that says Bird Beaks.
The computer will tell you what to do.
[click on images for enlargements]
For each of 6 birds, students were asked to select the items appropriate to that bird from a range of 8 foods.

Foods: pondweed, shellfish, fish, insect, snail, worm, berries, flower (nectar).

% responses
y4
y8
Duck:
pondweed
35
62
insect
16
12
Fantail:
insect
26
24
Kiwi:
insect
20
11
worm
63
76
berries
27
24
Tern:
fish
28
29
insect
27
20
worm
29
21
Thrush:
insect
11
29
snail
31
32
worm
36
36
berries
30
33
Tui:

insect
32
25
berries
33
42
flower (nectar)
33
48
Total score:
8.5–12
1
3
4.5–8
17
25
0.5–4
53
55
≤ 0
29
17
Commentary:
This would be a challenging task for many adults, but the level of performance can only be described as very low. Because incorrect choices were very common, the toal score was constructed by subtracting half the number of incorrect choices from the number of correct choices. Only about a quarter of all students got a score higher than one quarter of the maximum.
 
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