Grade Six Science

Hello Boys and Girls,

I trust you had a good week. Did you show your teachers how much you appreciated them, especially on Wednesday, World Teacher’s Day? Teachers are very important in your lives. They help their students discover, investigate, question, document and so on.

Last week we found out about science and scientists, and how we can be successful in our work this year. Did you learn the poem That’s Science? It’s so interesting and helps you to think about Science and how it involves so many aspects of life.

This week we will begin our adventure looking at living things. We will find out as much as we can about animals and then about plants.

What would you classify animals and plants as? Yes, animals and plants are living things. Another question for you – How do you know that something is a living thing? How do you know that you are living? Just think about it then let’s find out.

We can ask several questions and check different features. Look at the chart below to check the characteristics of living things.

Animals – Look at them. Can you name them all?

This is a nice way to find out about the characteristics.

There is also MRS GREN. Can you put the characteristics according to the first letters in MRS GREN?

What about non-living things? Put together a list of things around you that are non-living.

There are hundreds and hundreds of different animals all over our planet, Earth. Some live in trees, some live on the ground/under the ground, some live in water. Animals can be found everywhere, in every country, in every desert, mountain, swamp… everywhere.

You have named several animals. You have seen many animals around you. Are they all the same? Do they all eat the same foods, move in the same way, look the same way? How can you group them?

Animals can be grouped in different ways. How many ways can you think of? Write them down. They can be grouped or classified according to:

• their covering

• how they move

• their eating habits

• their body parts

• how they reproduce

• where they live, and so on

Did your list look like the one above?

Scientists have grouped animals into classes in order to make it easier to study them. There are many classes of these animals and every animal belongs to one of them. One of the large groupings is animals with and without backbones. Do you know what these kinds of animals are called? (If you do not know, find out.)

Yes, the animals with backbones are called vertebrates and those without are called invertebrates. Let’s look at the animals around and put each of them into one of the groups.

There are many classes of animals, as we already know. We will now look at the vertebrates. List them in your Science scrap book now.

The main classes are mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles and amphibians. Let’s first examine Mammals.

Were you able to name them all? As you can see, plants and animals, are living things. In the charts below you will see the seven features that show that something is living. Here is MRS NERG.

Did you name animals from the forests, the rivers, the mountains, the savannahs, your house, your yard, your school compound? Great! You could extend your list of animals. Now here’s another list where you can use a tick (√) to indicate the group to which the animal belongs.

What do they all have in common? Plants – Look at the pictures below and name the different plants.

We’ll stop here for now. Goodbye, Boys and Girls, we’ll continue next week.