Living Things Vocabulary
Name and use vocabulary for what makes something living (alive, dead, never been alive, movement, nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensitivity, excretion) and apply these terms when classifying objects and explaining why plants and animals count as living things
What a learner can do afterwards
- Correctly classify objects as living, dead, or never been alive and give a reason using one of the life process terms
- Name at least five life processes using the correct vocabulary
- Explain why a plant is alive using at least two life process words
1 · Read
Look around you. A dog, a bird, a plant: all alive right now. They can grow, eat, and move. Dead things were once alive, but not now. Some things were never alive, like rocks.
Scientists use special words for these things. Movement means it can move by itself. Nutrition means it eats or makes food. Growth means it gets bigger over time. Reproduction means it makes new babies like itself. Sensitivity means it can sense things around it. Excretion means it gets rid of waste it does not need.
Mia sees a weed and a rock. The weed grows and makes seeds, so it is alive. The rock never grows or moves, so it was never alive.
Ask yourself: does it grow, eat, or move by itself? If yes, it is alive.
Living things move, grow, eat, and sense, so they are alive.
Rewritten readings were written for this dataset.
More to read
The jobs living things do
We call learning about living things biology. Living things grow and can make more of their kind, such as babies or seeds. Making more is called reproduction. They respond to their surroundings. A flower turning towards sunlight shows sensitivity. Getting or making food is nutrition. Removing waste is excretion. Many living things move too. Rocks do not carry out these jobs. They were never alive. Plants do these jobs, so plants are alive.
Life comes in different sizes
There are many kinds of living things. The tiniest need a microscope to be seen. Others, such as whales and wolves, are large. Plants, animals, fungi and tiny bacteria are living things. Trees, ants and mushrooms are all alive. Though they look different, they share abilities such as growing, getting food and making more of their kind.
Energy keeps living things going
Living things cannot survive without energy. Plants and animals need it for growing and moving. Making babies or seeds takes energy too. So does moving things inside their bodies. Animals get energy from the food they eat. For most plants, sunlight supplies the energy they need.
Mushrooms belong to fungi
Mushrooms are fungi, a group of living things. Sunlight does not help fungi make food as it does for plants. Fungi absorb food from whatever they grow on. This gives them nutrition. They grow and reproduce by making more fungi. A mushroom cannot run or walk, but it carries out life's jobs. It is alive.
Sunlight helps plants make food
Most plants use sunlight to make food. We call this photosynthesis. Their food supplies energy for growth and staying alive. Animals cannot make food this way. They eat plants or other animals instead. The food plants make also supports many other living things.
2 · Watch
به انگلیسیTake it off screen
Where it sits
Learn first
Nothing; this is a starting point.
This opens up
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.