Year 6 - Science
Animal adaptations
Evolution and inheritance
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit explores how living things have changed over time, using fossils as evidence of past life. It covers how offspring vary from parents and how adaptation leads to evolution. Emphasis is on planning scientific enquiries, recording data, and evaluating scientific evidence.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to describe some adaptations in a range of animals.
Key Notes
- Animals have special features, or adaptations, that help them to survive in their habitats.
- Adaptations are passed from one generation of a species to another.
- Many different animals have adaptations that protect them from predators.
- An environment can change dramatically due to a natural disaster, or slowly over hundreds of years.
Vocabulary To Learn
- habitat: The place where a plant or animal lives is called its habitat.
- adaptation: An adaptation is a feature of a plant or animal that helps them to survive in their habitat.
- survive: To survive means to continue to stay alive.
- environment: An environment is the surroundings or conditions that an animal or plant lives in.
- predator: An animal that catches and eats other animals is a predator.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Pupils may think that animals are able to adapt during their lifetime, for example that they can change the colour of their fur to better blend in with new surroundings.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the scientific idea in this lesson using two key points.
Animals have special features, or adaptations, that help them to survive in their habitats. Adaptations are passed from one generation of a species to another.
2. Define this scientific word and use it in context. 'habitat'
The place where a plant or animal lives is called its habitat. Include the word in a full scientific explanation, not as a single label.
3. Correct this common scientific misunderstanding.
Mistake: Pupils may think that animals are able to adapt during their lifetime, for example that they can change the colour of their fur to better blend in with new surroundings. Correction: Explain that animals adapt slowly, over many years and generations.
More Lessons In This Unit
- Charles Darwin and finches Study Guide
- Evolution: evidence Study Guide
- Evolution: presentation Study Guide
- Family trees (non-statutory) Study Guide
- How living things have changed over time Study Guide
- Human skulls: using evidence from the past (non-statutory) Study Guide
- Inherited characteristics Study Guide
- More about plant adaptations Study Guide
- Offspring: similar but not identical Study Guide
- Plant adaptations Study Guide
- The survival of the fittest Study Guide
- What fossils can tell us about the past Study Guide
- Where fossils are found (non-statutory) Study Guide
Browse all guides in the Year 6 Science guide library.