Orana Park Visit – Y13 Biology 3rd March 2024

Our intention was to support the learning of standard AS91606 in which students learn about ‘trends in human evolution’. Orana park have a huge collection of hominin skulls that the students work with and compare with other primates. The program the zoo school put together for us also sees them learning about observing animals and picking up the skills required to carry out their own animal behaviour studies.

Zak and Alex have provided feeback below - not all of it helpful!

“Watching the apes play at the zoo was entertaining and informative, we learned about the evolutionary trends and were able to compare the small-brained behavior of our monkey cousins to our classmates. We learned that Mr Steggles loves looking at skulls, turning them over, measuring them. So watch out! As well as very informative sessions on human evolution we also watched some ostriches for a while, learning how to conduct an animal behavior study and in the process discovering that ostriches don't do very much. Lastly, we got to feed the giraffes (arguably the best part). Overall it was an entertaining and enjoyable trip, I would highly recommend.” Zak Klempel – Y13

“It was pretty fun, we went to go see skulls and do all sorts of measurements with them, which provided a unique learning experience for me which felt more hands-on than it felt more of a theory thing, other than that I had fun seeing all the animals since I have never been to a zoo before.” Alex Barangay – Y13