ACARA v9 CONTENT DESCRIPTION “observe external features of plants and animals and describe ways they can be grouped based on these features”
Builds on what children already notice every day: animals have ears, legs and tails, and plants have leaves and flowers. Here we give those parts a name and start to use them to sort living things into groups.
What is an external feature?
An external feature is a part of a living thing we can see on the outside. A cat has ears, legs and a tail. A plant has roots, a stem, leaves and a flower. When we look closely at a plant or an animal, we can point to its features and name them.
Find the parts
An animal has parts on the outside we can see. Tap a button to light up that part.
These are external features: the parts we see on the outside. Ears, legs, a tail and wings are all external features of an animal.
Grouping by a shared feature
When some living things have the same feature, we can put them in one group. A bird, a bee and a bat all have wings, so they can go together. Choosing one feature, like wings, and checking who has it, is how we sort a mixed pile into groups.
Sort by one feature: wings
We can group animals by a feature they share. Sort this pile into the ones with wings and the ones without.
Right now the animals are all mixed up. Pick a feature and we can put them into groups.
Plants have features too
Plants are living things, and they have external features just like animals. Roots hold a plant in the ground, the stem holds it up, the leaves are wide and flat, and the flower is often bright. We can look at a plant and name each part.
Parts of a plant
Plants have external features too. Tap a button to light up roots, stem, leaves or flower.
Roots, stem, leaves and a flower are the external features of this plant. Plants and animals both have parts we can see and name.
More than one way to group
There is often more than one way to group the same living things. We could group them by where they live, or by whether they have legs. When we pick a new feature, the same animals can land in different groups. That is fine: the feature we choose decides the groups.
Choose the feature to group by
The same living things can be grouped in more than one way. Switch the feature and watch the groups change.
Grouped by where they live, the fish, frog and duck go together because they live in water.
Comparing the same and different
To group living things, it helps to compare them one feature at a time. We ask the same question of each, like does it have wings, and answer yes or no. Where the answers match, the living things are the same; where they differ, they belong in different groups.
Compare two living things
Looking at one feature at a time tells us how two living things are the same and how they are different.
For this feature the cat and the duck are the same. Shared features are how we make a group.
Why this matters
Looking closely, naming what we see, and sorting by shared features are the first steps of science. By observing the external features of plants and animals and grouping them, children learn to describe the living world carefully and to spot what living things have in common.
Quick self-check
1. What is an external feature of a living thing?
2. Which of these is an external feature of a plant?
3. We can put living things into groups by looking at their...
4. A bird, a bee and a bat can go in one group because they all...
5. If we group animals a new way, the same animals can...