Animal Classification Lesson: Vertebrates & Invertebrates, Grades 3-5

Does it have a backbone? That one question is the first step in classifying animals. This lesson starts with a bison and a bumble bee and asks how their bodies are different, then shows students that classifying means grouping animals by the features they share. Students learn to tell a vertebrate (backbone) from an invertebrate (no backbone), find out that about 97 out of every 100 kinds of animals are invertebrates, and meet four invertebrate groups: insects, spiders, worms and mollusks.

What's inside

• 14 slides, with speaker notes on all 14
• Lesson plan, 2 pages
• Student worksheet, 2 pages
• Answer key, 1 page

Answer key included

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