Taxonomy and Classification Unit: Part 1 Introduction and Activities

This unit includes 8 Lessons (50 minutes each) and 23 pages of printable work bundle. The Work Bundles has students fill-in critical notes (red slides), conduct exciting hands-on activities, answer questions, interpret graphs, includes games, built-in quizzes, and much more. The work bundles chronologically follow the detailed and interactive set of slideshows. A Quiz Game concludes for a great review and additional assessment. Answer Keys, video links, crosswords, built-in quizzes, and much more are provided. Everything you need to run a fantastic learning experience is provided. Everything arrives in editable format if you want add in your own slides and activities, and the slideshows and work bundles can easily be converted into Google Slides / docs for friendly Google Classroom learning. This unit explores Taxonomy and Classification of the Kingdoms of Life, and also tangents into Zoology to keep things interesting and exciting. Your students will love everything about this unit.

Brief Description of the 8 Lessons in this Unit

Lesson #1 Taxonomy and Classification Introduction (50 Minutes): The slideshow begins asking students to describe where they are from. The PowerPoint then begins to break down their location starting from the very broad, Universe - Galaxy, Solar System, Planet, Continent, Country etc all the way down to the very specific - Street address. A neat activity follows that has students place their sneakers / footwear into a pile in the middle of the classroom. Students are then asked in the PowerPoint to separate the sneakers into a few piles based on similarities in their structure. Another activity along the same lines that involves nuts and bolts is described. The definition of Taxonomy is then discussed, and then a few slides about Carolus Linnaeus is presented. The first reference to King Phillip is made. Small references are placed here and there. Teacher just pretends that they don't make much sense. Later in the lesson the acronym Did King Phillip Come Over For Good Spaghetti is made. The students will piece it all together later. Classification is discussed. A neat activity that has the students try to guess the genus and species names of some common animals is provided in a step by step guess and then the answer is revealed / slide sequence. A poll follows this challenge that asks the students if they prefer science names or common names (all choose common names). Next, A Brown Bear are presented as well as the Mountain Lion over many slides that show how common names can become very confusing. At the end of the sequence the students are asked the poll question again and most students see the need to have a more organized naming system. Having the students 180 from preferring common names to seeing the pitfalls of common names is always a neat moment.

Lesson #2 Species, Phylogeny (50 Minutes). Next, the definition of a species is described with visuals, discussion over hybrids, mules, tigon's, ligers, is discussed. Phylogeny is defined and students learn about clades with some color coding of a phylogenic tree. A series of questions with a phylogenic get students connecting which species are connect to which. All of the questions in the slideshow correspond to the student work bundles so students are active learners.

Lesson #3 Dichotomous Key: Student's learn what a dichotomous key is, and then answer a series of questions with visuals to demonstrate understanding. A question in the work bundle and slideshow has student's group various symbols into four categories based on similarities and differences. Some slides that provide advice when using a dichotomous key