Relationships of Living Things in an Ecosystem

This week, Grade 1s explored the different relationships of living things in an ecosystem and how these relationship influence survival. The symbiotic relationships are predation, parasitism, commensalism, mutualism and competition. after discussing the characteristics of each relationship, Grade 1s used their own words to show understanding and sorted out the pictures to the right relationship.

How do living things make sure that they will survive in the ecosystem? If they were prey, does that mean they will just wait for their time to actually be eaten by their predator? When these teacher questions were raised to them, the students were firm of their NO and explained that some animals can hide from their predators. This led us to learning adaptation skills of different animals and plants. We defined adaptation as the means of living things to adjust to temperature, weather, predators around them and others in order to survive. Some of their adaptation strategies are camouflage, migration, hibernation, using their physical body parts, mimicry and more. To assess how they understand adaptation, Grade 1s were given a challenge. If they were to turn themselves into a newly-found living thing, what features will they want to have in order to survive the ecosystem of their choice. They showed impressive ideas working on this task. Some of them added thorny spike around them so they could drive away small bugs or insects that would want to feed on them. Some added poison as their way to protect themselves from predators. Some covered themselves with colours that will help them camouflage.

Their way of thinking was amazing. It gives us an assurance that in the future, when they face difficult or challenging situations due to the demands of the changes, they will not run out of ideas to use to adapt and adjust to these demands.