In this lesson, you will be investigating features that can be used to classify animals.   A feature is something that distinguishes one thing from another.   A feature, or characteristic, may be the way something looks or some other quality.  

Animals, animals

How many different types of animals are there?   You probably realise that there are lots - about one million!   Some are alike and some are very different.

Think about the animals at your place.

Can you think of two animals at your place that are similar? What about two animals at your place that are different?

Here are the animals that are found at Kim's place .

Animals that live at Kim's place

As you can see, there is a large variety of animals here.   To make it easier to investigate these animals, it would be useful to divide them into smaller groups.

To do this, you need to look closely at the animals and compare them.   Look for the features that the animals have in common.   For example, a dog and a cat are covered in fur, have four legs and teeth.   So you could put them in the same group.

Sort the animals into four smaller groups.  One group has already been made for you.

Remember there are no 'correct' answers here.   Different people will make different groups, depending on the features they select.

Group 1     dog, cat

Group 2     _________________________________________________

Group 3     _________________________________________________

Group 4     _________________________________________________

You answers may not be the same as those given in the suggested answer.

Lesson 11 - A variety of animals

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