Year 6 Science: Living Things and Their Habitats 

Project Overview

 

We began studying living things and their habitats during home learning as the children were able to explore either their own gardens or local natural areas. When we returned to school, we investigated key questions and the children developed their own predictions and investigations to answer these. First, the children were presented with the following question: do we have more vertebrates or invertebrates on the school grounds? The children then explored both the building and our large outdoor area in order to answer the question. Following this, Year 6 learnt how to classify animals, plants and trees using classification keys.

What The Student Says

“Being outside was so fun. It was amazing how many animals we found. I think if the weather would’ve been different though, we might’ve seen more invertebrates like slugs and worms.”

 -Y6 Child

“I’ve learnt that being able to classify living things is really important.” 

– Y6 Child

What skills were developed?

The children learnt about the importance of classifying living things through developing their curriculum knowledge on the following areas:

  • how living things are classified into broad groups according to common observable characteristics and based on similarities and differences, including micro-organisms, plants and animals
  • reasons for classifying plants and animals based on specific characteristics

They also developed their scientific enquiry skills:

  • planning different types of scientific enquiries to answer questions, including recognising and controlling variables where necessary
  • recording data and results of increasing complexity using scientific diagrams, labels, classification keys and tables

What The Teacher Says

I loved seeing the children’s eyes light up as they debated the best way to investigate the questions. They loved exploring our outdoor area and recognising which animals were vertebrates and invertebrates. Given the range of animals that reside on our grounds, including chickens, goats and a range of visiting birds, the pupils were really engaged. Our allotment area and campfire area also provided plenty of opportunity to search for invertebrates.

– Miss Jessop, Year 6 Teacher