Living things are sorted into kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria) using features you can observe, and you can justify each placement with those features.
A mushroom pops up on the lawn overnight. It grows from the ground and doesn't walk away, so it must be a plant. Right?
There are millions of kinds of living things. This lesson is about the biggest groups scientists sort them into, and the features that decide.
Make your prediction first. Help opens once you've locked it in.
Choose a specimen, read its description, and answer each question about it. The key tells you its kingdom.
Use the key to place at least 5 specimens in their kingdom.
Use the board. This ticks when you get there.
In your book: choose five organisms, one from each kingdom, and write the observable feature that places each one.
Which kingdom does each belong to?
Put the red kangaroo's classification in order, from the biggest group to the smallest.
Write one sentence: "At first I thought… Now I think… because…"
Revision summary
Students place organisms into kingdoms using observable features, justify each placement, recognise a hard-to-classify case, and see that kingdoms sort by features rather than relatedness, a model revised as evidence improved (AC9S7U01, node 2, a hinge node). About 28 minutes.
Open the teacher guide: answers, solutions, slides and a worksheet.
A concept tutorial for introducing or revising the idea; it does not replace specimens, photos or a microscope. Set the width with ?width=minimum, typical (default) or wider.
The hinge is feature-based justification: students who sort by first impressions ("it doesn't move, so it's a plant") can't choose discriminating features when they build keys in node 4.
Kingdoms are not the endpoint. The five-kingdom scheme (common in Year 7) sorts by observable features, which is what the descriptor asks for, but it is not a family tree: fungi share a more recent common ancestor with animals than with plants, "protists" is a grab-bag of unrelated groups, and "bacteria" hides the archaea. Two Explain questions make this explicit, and the history (two kingdoms, then five, then three domains as microscopes and then DNA added evidence) shows classification as a model revised under evidence, the point about scientific rigour.
Model notes: algae such as kelp are grouped with protists here; many textbooks differ. Yeast is a single-celled fungus, so "can you see one without a microscope?" doesn't place it: it is in the sort, not the key, on purpose.
Sorting by features, especially feeding, instead of 'grows in the ground, doesn't move'. When a student calls a mushroom a plant, ask how it gets its food.
Stretch: Viruses can reproduce only inside living cells. Should they be in a kingdom? Argue both sides.
Support: Give the kingdom table from the primer as a card during the sort.
Next: using dichotomous keys (node 3), the same feature-by-feature reasoning, one choice at a time. In Year 10, natural selection and common ancestry explain why relatedness, not features alone, is the basis of modern classification.
In class: a tray of specimens or photos (moss, mushroom, bread mould, insect, shell), and a microscope slide of pond water.