Teacher sheet · Ages 6–7 · about 45–50 minutes
Sorting living things
Lesson page: echoesof.science/school/classification/ages-6-7/ · Pupil worksheet: echoesof.science/school/classification/ages-6-7/print/
Learning aims
- Classifying means sorting living things into groups by their features.
- Animals, plants and fungi are different groups; fungi are not plants.
- Some animals have a backbone, but most do not.
- Every kind of living thing has a two-word scientific name.
Lesson plan
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5 min | Starter: sort the class by one feature (for example shoes with laces or without). |
| 10 min | Read the text together. |
| 20 min | Sort the animals with two different questions. |
| 5 min | Play Backbone or no backbone? or do the quiz. |
| 5 min | Share: can other groups guess your question? |
Materials for the experiment
- About 10 animal pictures or toy animals per group (for example a dog, a bird, a fish, a snail, a spider, a butterfly, a worm, a frog, a cat, a crab)
- Two hoops or two large sheets of paper
- Sticky notes and a pencil
Safety: Use pictures or toys, not live animals. Keep small toys away from mouths.
Common misconceptions
| Pupils may think… | Actually… |
|---|---|
| Mushrooms are plants. | Fungi are a separate group; they cannot make food from sunlight. |
| Only big animals are 'real' animals. | Insects, worms and jellyfish are animals too, and most animals have no backbone. |
| A crab's hard shell is a backbone. | A crab has no backbone; its hard covering is on the outside. |
Worksheet answers
- Any vertebrate (dog, fish, bird, frog…) and any invertebrate (insect, worm, snail, crab…).
- Fungus.
- Any yes/no question about a feature, e.g. 'Does it have wings?', 'Does it have fur?'
Quiz answers
- What do scientists do when they classify living things? Sort them into groups. Classifying means sorting into groups.[1]
- Is a mushroom a plant? No, it is a fungus. Fungi are their own big group.[4]
- Which animal has a backbone? A dog. Dogs, like you, have a backbone.[6]
- Do most animals have a backbone? No, most have no backbone. Most animals are animals without a backbone, like insects.[6]
- How many words are in a science name like Canis lupus? Two. Every science name has two parts.[3]
Going further
Make a class 'sorting wall' with two hoops drawn on it. Each day a pupil chooses a new secret question and the others guess it.
Sources used in this lesson
- [1] Biology 2e, 20.1 Organizing life on Earth (OpenStax (Rice University)): reliability High
- [2] Concepts of Biology, 12.1 Organizing life on Earth (OpenStax (Rice University)): reliability High
- [3] What's in a name? Naming (Harvard Museum of Natural History): reliability High
- [4] The wonderful world of fungi (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew): reliability High
- [6] Invertebrate (OLogy card) (American Museum of Natural History): reliability High
- [7] Classification: making a dichotomous key (lesson plan) (US National Park Service): reliability High
Full list with links and a note on each source's reliability: echoesof.science/school/classification/sources/
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