Living things & the processes of life - Variety & characteristic features - Living on Earth (Animals) - P5G14a - LT-C1.1

2. Having looked at invertebrates the children may have a clearer idea of what a vertebrate might be. They can easily feel their own bones and should be able to tell that these make them different from slugs and snails, woodlice and bees (although for many insects the lack of an internal skeleton is not obvious).
They will probably not be able to name the vertebrate groups and it might be better to write down the names of all the animals they can think of and then look at the different types.

There are five groups of vertebrates and they have the following characteristics -

Vertebrate	Covered in?	How many limbs?	How do they reproduce?
Mammals	feathers, hair or wool	may have 4 limbs	give birth to live young which they feed on milk
Birds	feathers	have wings	lay hard-shelled eggs on land
Fish	moist scales	have fins	lay soft eggs in water
Reptiles	dry scales	may have 4 limbs	lay tough-shelled eggs on land
Amphibians	moist skin	may have 4 limbs	lay soft eggs in water

It may be helpful to use worksheets C19a (G) to help the children identify which animals are in which groups by drawing lines, cut and stick or colour coding. This may well be best done as a class exercise. Worksheet C19b (G) links the main characteristics of each group and be done in a similar way. An alternative is to enlarge both sheets to A3 and use as a large wall display for the children to sort in groups - perhaps with animals on one side of the group names and characteristics on the other.