Friday 21st May 2021

LC: To use and create classification keys to group, identify and name living things.

LC: To gather, record, classify and present data in different ways to answer scientific questions.

LC: To use keys.

Scientists think that there are 7.77 million species of animals in the world, living on the land, in the sky and in the sea.

We have discovered and named about 1.4 million of these…which means that over 6 million species of animal are yet to be discovered!

We have already discovered:

5500 species of mammal

10 400 species of bird

10 000 species of reptile

7300 species of amphibian

33 000 species of fish

1 305 000 kinds of invertebrate

Which kind of creature are we?

With so many living things to make records of, and so many yet to discover, it is important that we have a system to organise and make sense of the information we have about them.

We organise living things into groups based on their similarities and differences, so that we can learn more about what makes each species unique. The differences between living things is sometimes called variation.

To do this we classify the animals.

Scientists usually split them into two groups: vertebrates (animals with a backbone) and invertebrates (animals without a backbone).

Vertebrates can be separated into 5 groups:

Mammals - They have warm blood, and have hair or fur on their bodies. Mammal babies are born alive. The mothers feed their babies milk.

Fish - Fish live in water. They have fins instead of legs and gills instead of lungs. They lay their eggs in water. They have cold blood and scaly skin.

Reptiles - Some reptiles live on land, and some in water. They have lungs that breathe air. They have scales and are cold-blooded. They lay their eggs on land.

Birds - Birds have a beak, wings, feathers and 2 legs. They lay eggs on land. They have warm blood.

Amphibians -  Live on land and in water. They are cold-blooded. They have gills when they are young. They have smooth skin. They lay their eggs in water.

We are going to use a classification key to identifying living things through a series of questions based on their similarities and differences.

On Seesaw, you have 2 pages to complete.

Page 1 - Using the information from above, sort the animals into the correct boxes based on the questions.

Page 2 - Think of questions you could use to differentiate between the 2 animals below.