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Grade 5 Science · World 3: Living Library · Level 16
Why Scientists Group
Explain why scientists sort living things by shared characteristics, using data.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 16
- Welcome to the Living Library! Earth has millions of kinds of living things. Scientists sort them, the way a library sorts books.
- They sort by characteristics, which are body features they can check, like a backbone or feathers.
- Looks and habitat can fool you. A whale looks like a fish, but it's a mammal.
- A sorting key asks one question at a time. Follow it from the top, and it leads you to a group.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Science:
- S5L1.a — Develop a model that illustrates how animals are sorted into groups (vertebrate and invertebrate) and how vertebrates are sorted into groups (fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal) using data from multiple sources.