Year 6 - Science
Inherited characteristics
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 identify inherited and environmental characteristics of different offspring.
Key Notes
- When living things reproduce they pass on characteristics to their offspring. This is known as inheritance.
- Inherited characteristics are passed from one generation to another.
- Inherited characteristics include eye colour, height, skin colour, hair colour etc.
- Environmental characteristics are ones which are not passed down from parent to child.
Vocabulary To Learn
- generation: A generation in a family is all of the people born and living around the same time.
- characteristic: A characteristic is a feature or property of something that we can use to help identify it.
- inheritance: Inheritance is the process of passing on physical features from parent to offspring when they reproduce.
- inherited characteristic: An inherited characteristic has been passed from parent to offspring during reproduction.
- environmental characteristic: An environmental characteristic is one which has been learned or acquired during an organism's lifetime.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Pupils may think that environmental variation, such as scars, piercings or muscle size and tone, can be passed on to offspring in the same way that inherited characteristics can.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the scientific idea in this lesson using two key points.
When living things reproduce they pass on characteristics to their offspring. This is known as inheritance. Inherited characteristics are passed from one generation to another.
2. Define this scientific word and use it in context. 'generation'
A generation in a family is all of the people born and living around the same time. Include the word in a full scientific explanation, not as a single label.
3. Correct this common scientific misunderstanding.
Mistake: Pupils may think that environmental variation, such as scars, piercings or muscle size and tone, can be passed on to offspring in the same way that inherited characteristics can. Correction: Use the examples in the lesson to make clear the difference between characteristics that we are born with and those that are acquired, and how only those we are born with can be passed on to offspring.
More Lessons In This Unit
- Animal adaptations Study Guide
- 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
- 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.