The Butterflyfish Family (Taxonomy)
The Butterflyfish Family lesson is designed to introduce students to the grouping of marine life in taxonomies. This famiiy of fish is delightfully colored, has a huge variety of species and allows students aged 7-12 to explore butterflyfish at different levels of detail. When completed, students should have an idea about families and species hierarchiies. They will learn about this family of fish behaviors, habitats, diets and more. It is an easy introduction for students to start learning more about oceans and their inhabitants.
For tuning for the younger students, omit scientific names and keep attributes to a few things. Expand the lesson for older students by teaching scientific names and increasing the number of attributes to discover and learn.
Age
7-12; extend for advanced and older students using taxonomy heirarchy language and scientific names. Dive deeper dive into fish characteristics.
Duration
5-6 Hours: 1 hr present/discuss; 3 hrs student/group create butterflyfish presentation; home or school; paper or digital; 1-2 hrs Each student/group 5-10 minutes presentation to class
Materials & Resources
INSERT DECK LINK
Teachers will direct student(s) to prepare a digital presentation (template sample: last slide) or a physical presentation using various craft resources and printed materials .
Resources:
There are numerous fish resourses on the internet, here are some child-safe sites to consider:
http://www.inaturalist.org
htttp://www.wikipedia.org
https://australian.museum/learn/animals/fishes/
Deeper Scientific Name Resource, excellent detailed resource for extending lesson for older students:
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Chaetodontidae/
https://realitypathing.com/types-of-butterflyfish-and-their-unique-features
Procedure
1) Present and discuss the PPT: 'The Butterflyfish Family' or use recording link to play to class
2) Ask students (singular or in groups) to select one specific Butterflyfish and have them make a PPT or paper presentation similar to the last presentation slide (home/class) Suggest a list of things they may want to learn, diet, life span, coloration purpose, habitat, spawning, Male/Female differences
3) Have Students present their slide to the class
4) Discuss the vocabulary they learned and use the assessment questions for full review of learnings and what might be the next thing they would like to learn
Vocabulary
Butterflyfish: A family of oval shaped ocean fish, often colored in patterns of while, black and yellow/orange, can have blue spots; often found in pairs
Chaetondon: Scientific Family
Taxonomy: Biologic naming and classification of living and extinct organisms into ranks like domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species (example: family: butterflyfish species: Banded butterflyfish)
Assessment
Discuss what similarities and differences were learned about butterflyfish: – similariities i.e. shape, diet, size, habitat, mating; differences – i.e. location found, patterns behaviors. Other information they could explore: how the family gets so many varieties, who are their preditors, use of appendages (fins) to move through the water, or other purposes, cooperative work with other species (symbiotic relationships.) Discuss other species families they might like to explore.
