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Teaching activity – Food of wild cats

This resource for level 5 students illustrates how to use evidence about the food of wild cats to support ideas and promote critical thinking.

A tabby cat on green grass licking its lips.

Tags

  • AudienceKaiako
  • Curriculum Level5
  • Resource LanguageEnglish

About this resource

This resource illustrates how the item, Food of wild cats, from the Assessment Resource Banks (ARB) can be adapted to provide opportunities for students to strengthen their science capability by using evidence to support ideas.

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Teaching activity: Food of wild cats

Learning focus

Students use evidence to support their ideas.

Learning activity

Food of wild cats from Assessment Resource Banks

In this activity, students are provided with pie graphs showing the different types of food wild cats caught in two locations. Although this graph interpretation task is currently set at level 3 or 4 the following adaptation adds a more demanding level of critical thinking.

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Use the two graphs to find evidence that supports or otherwise the claim that wild cats are a major reason for a decline in native bird numbers. This could be added as another question to the ARB task but may be more effective set up as group or class discussions or debate.

The points below provide some examples of how students might use evidence to support their ideas.

The following is evidence supporting the claim that wild cats are a major reason for a decline in native bird numbers:

  • Even though birds are not the main food source, they still make up a sizeable proportion, especially on Stewart Island. 
  • We don’t know what the bird population is. Cats might only eat the other things because there are not many birds. Removing wild cats might increase the bird population. 

Evidence against the claim that wild cats are a major reason for a decline in native bird numbers:

  • In both graphs birds do not make up the main food of wild cats.
  • Both graphs show that the main food source of wild cats includes other animals effect bird life. Keeping this population under control means the wild cats are doing a good job.

See the types of questions and justifications students might propose in the table below. Now, ask students to discuss what other information they might need to decide if wild cats are the major reason for the decline in native bird numbers.  Get them to shape questions that could be used to gather this additional evidence and justify why it would be useful to find answers in each case.

Question 

Why might it be important to know? 

What is the size of the bird population in both areas?

If there are few birds it may be because wildcats and other predators have already caused damage.

There may not be many birds left to catch so they have turned to other food choices.

Do the cats target a particular bird species? Are the birds they eat endangered?

We might be less concerned if they only catch introduced birds.

Many of New Zealand's endangered birds are ill-equipped to cope with predators.

What is the population of wildcats in the area?

If there are few wildcats, their impact won't be as great.

Are there particular seasons when the cats catch birds? Does this impact on birds' breeding patterns?

For example, if they kill adults feeding chicks, or raid nests, this increases the impact because more than one bird is affected.

In science, the explanations need to be supported by evidence that is based on, or derived from, observations of the natural world. Scientific evidence is related to all the data collected rather than emotive responses, in this case, how we might feel about cats or birds is put to one side as the evidence is considered.

Developing an appreciation of what counts as evidence in science supports students to become scientifically literate, such as participating as critical, informed, and responsible citizens in a society in which science plays a significant role. This is the purpose of science in The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum.

What are we looking for?

When students are justifying their decisions:

  • Are they using evidence or emotions to justify their ideas? Are they using all the relevant evidence needed?
  • Do they refer to the evidence from both graphs?
  • Are they able to identify conflicting evidence and take that into consideration?
  • Are they prepared to suspend judgement if they think there is not enough evidence?
  • Do they raise questions about how the evidence was collected; for example, how many cats were included in the study, how what they caught was identified, how long the study went on, etc.? (This is more aligned to capability 3, Critiquing Evidence, but is a logical aspect to be considering when thinking about data presented without any supporting information about the investigation.)

This activity could be adapted to any context where a claim is made and supporting data is provided.