Grouping Living Things
Recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways based on observable features
What a learner can do afterwards
- Group a set of organisms using at least two different criteria (e.g. by habitat, by body covering, by diet)
- Explain the reasoning behind each grouping choice
- Recognise that the same organism can belong to different groups depending on the criteria used
1 · Read
Living things can be grouped in more than one way. You pick a feature to sort by, like where something lives, what covers its body, or what it eats. Change the feature, and you get a new set of groups.
Look at an owl, a rabbit, and a fish. Sort by body covering: the owl has feathers, the rabbit has fur, and the fish has scales. All three land in different groups. Now sort by diet: the owl eats mice and the fish eats smaller water creatures, so they group together as meat-eaters. The rabbit eats grass, so it stands alone this time.
The same animal can belong to different groups. Sort by habitat and the owl joins the rabbit as a land animal. Sort by diet and the owl joins the fish as a meat-eater. The animal did not change, only the feature you chose to sort by.
Pick a feature to group by, and the same living things can land in new groups every time.
The rewritten readings were written for this dataset.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
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.