GRADE 6
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Life Systems: Grade 6 – Diversity of Living Things
APPLICABLE EXPECTATIONS:
By the end of Grade 6, students will:
- explain why formal classification systems are usually based on structural
characteristics (e.g., type of skeleton, circulatory system, reproductive
system) rather than on physical appearance or behavioural characteristics
- identify and describe the characteristics of vertebrates, and use these
characteristics to classify vertebrates as mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles,
and fish (the five main classes)
- identify and describe the characteristics of invertebrates, and classify
invertebrates into phyla (e.g., sponges, worms, mollusks, arthropods)
- identify various kinds of plant or animal organisms in a given plot using
commercially produced biological or classification keys (e.g. organisms observed
in a pond study, in the school yard, in wildlife centres)
- describe specific characteristics or adaptations that enable each group
of vertebrates to live in its particular habitat (e.g. fish in water), and
explain the importance of maintaining that habitat for the survival of the
species
- explain how fossils provide evidence of changes in animals over geological
time
The following vignettes address these expectations:
The
American Badger
Birds
of Prey
Secretive
Creatures of the Sydenham
The Eastern
Spiny Softshell Turtle
Something’s
Fishy
The Sydenham
Has a Lot of “Mussel!”
River
Bottom Critters
Rare Trees
of the Sydenham River
The Drooping
Trillium
Carolinian
Canada