Mississippi Science ZOO.6.2
The Standard
- ZOO.6
- Students will understand the structure and function of phylum Echinodermata, and how they demonstrate the characteristics of living things.
Explain how the starfish inverts its stomach for external digestion of food.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Phylum Echinodermata
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how a sea star pulls a mussel shell open slightly with its tube feet, then turns its stomach inside out through its mouth. They describe how enzymes break down the mussel before the stomach returns inside.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can label the tube feet, mouth, stomach, and mussel on a feeding diagram. They can explain that the exposed stomach releases enzymes, takes in broken-down food, then pulls back inside.
Common Misconceptions
- Some students think the sea star swallows the mussel whole or pushes its stomach out through its anus. Others think the tube feet digest the food, rather than helping open the shell.
How to Assess It
- On an exit ticket, have students draw a sea star feeding on a mussel. Ask them to label the mouth, exposed stomach, and where enzymes act, then write what happens to the stomach afterward.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Turn a sock inside out through a hole in a cardboard sea star, then place it over a paper mussel.
Ask students to write how a sea star eats a mussel without swallowing its shell, using mouth, stomach, and enzymes.
Give pairs four cards to order: tube feet open shell, stomach emerges, enzymes break down food, stomach pulls back inside.
Show an oyster farm photo and ask students how sea stars feeding on oysters could change the harvest.
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Printable ZOO.6.2 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- ZOO.10.5
Dissect representative taxa and compare their internal and external anatomy and complexity.
- ZOO.3.4
Describe how the radula is used in feeding.
- ZOO.2.2
Identify the anatomy and physiology of a sponge, including how specialized cells within sponges work cooperatively without forming tissues to capture and digest...
- ZOO.6.4
Describe the sexual and asexual reproduction of starfish.
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