Feral goats
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Y8 (08/2006) |
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| a) |
Answers (effects) for each feral goat action are given below.
Eat undergrowth and shrubs in forests and bush.
Destroy farmland grass.
Break down fences. Eat plants that hold soil in place on steep hills. |
4 effects correctly identified – difficult |
| b) | Destroy | difficult |
| c) |
Accept any of:
[NOTE: Only 3 out of 214 students answered this correctly] |
3 correct responses – very difficult 2 correct responses – difficult 1 correct response – moderate |
Based on a representative sample of 214 Y8 students.
| Common response | Likely misconception | |
| a) | Answers repeated information given without identifying an effect, e.g., feral goats eating the undergrowth means "no more scrub and undergrowth" | Student may not understand cause and effect |
| a) | Copied phrases from box above without explaining, e.g., the effect of feral goats eating the undergrowth is "regenerating bush" | Student may not understand purpose of giving the phrases in the box or the meaning of the phrases. |
| b) | Impound the goat | Looked for key word "fenced" in flow chart and read directly across from it. |
| c) | You are allowed to destroy goats if they are not marked with a "registered identification" or were not purebred. | Students did not realise that "registered identification" and purebred were insufficient criteria on their own to destroy goats. They did not realise the cumulative nature of flow charts. |
Knowledge of what makes some animals pests:
Students could research the "life style" of animals that may be regarded as pests.
What to look for:
- Can students identify the behaviour or adaptation that makes it a pest?
- Do they recognise that their success in adapting to a particular environment can cause them to be difficult to control?
- Can they make links between the harm they cause and the rules for controlling them?
Some students had difficulty identifying the effects of the goats' actions. Check students understand cause and effect and have the appropriate vocabulary to describe such relationships.
Students struggling to work out which thing is a cause and which is an effect may find it helpful if it is explained that the cause is the reason and comes before the effect (the result). NOTE: This order is not always maintained in sentences. For example in the sentence "The flood was caused by the heavy rain" the heavy rain is the cause (it happened before the flood) although it is mentioned after the effect in the sentence. Useful vocabulary and phrases for cause and effect relationships include because of, caused by, reason for, attributed to, on account of, owing to, due to, since, as a result of, consequently, so, therefore.
Those students who did understand cause and effect varied in the specificity of their responses.
| Actions of feral goats | Example of specific effect identified | Example of less specific effect identified |
| Feral goats eat plants that hold soil in place on steep hills. | The effect would be soil erosion, and if there are rivers and streams below the water won't be as clean any more. | causing soil to collapse and break down. |
Both responses were counted as correct but a next learning step could be to get students to look at each others' responses and assess how specific each response was. Discuss what makes a response specific. Research on inter-relationships suggests that in order to develop an understanding of difficult and complex environmental issues, children need to work with specific examples rather than generalised terms.
Reading flow charts
Reading flow charts is an example of students learning to use a range of scientific symbols and conventions (Communicating in science). In this resource students found it very difficult to identify multiple conditions when interpreting the flow diagram. Many did not seem to understand the cumulative nature of flow diagrams.
The following ARB resources are about animal and/ or plant pests:
Level 3
Level 4
- RCD – Rabbit Calicivirus Disease (controlling rabbits with calicivirus)
- Couch - a type of grass
- Kahili ginger -wild ginger
- Old man's beard