Here we focus on those scientific concepts that are the hardest to explain to children. We break it down into what pupils need to know and outline the background science. Even though much of the background science does not need to be taught to primary aged children, it is useful for you as a teacher when addressing misconceptions and children’s challenging questions. 

Please refer to your national curriculum documents when planning your sequence of work and ensure that you teach the correct knowledge for your year group. 

What do children need to know about living things and their habitats? 

Your pupils’ learning about the enormous variety of living things on our planet and their interdependence is crucially linked with their learning in other topics (e.g., animals including humans, plants, evolution and inheritance). It cannot be effectively taught in isolation and those connections should be made explicit and developed wherever possible. We have included some ideas for how to teach living things and their habitats in part two of this topic guide. 

Key scientific concepts: Pupils need to... 

1. Be able to sort, group and classify living things and give reasons for their choices 

2. Identify plants and animals and consider how they are suited to their habitat 

3. Understand that living things in an ecosystem are interdependent 

4. Consider the causes of environmental change and its impact on living things 

5. Describe the lifecycles and reproduction processes of different groups of living things

1. Sorting, grouping and classifying living things

Pupils need to know: 

• How to distinguish between living and non-living things

• How to sort and group living things based on their characteristics (including using classification keys) and be able to give reasons for their choices 

Background science

Making comparisons between things and deciding how to sort, group and classify them is a very important scientific skill for children to develop. For example, they need to be able to categorise things as living, dead or never alive. A helpful question for children to think about is ‘is it able to grow and make more of itself?’

Tricky items to be aware of, that are often wrongly considered to be living, include:

• Fire/flames: although demonstrating many life-like characteristics (e.g., movement, use of oxygen to spread and grow, consuming things), fire is not living

• Leaves on the ground: these used to belong to a living organism – a tree or plant – and are now dead

• Seeds: these are a bit trickier, as they are dormant, storing energy which they use to grow into plants (that are living) and acting as a stage in the lifecycle of that plant. So, they are not alive themselves, but neither are they non-living as they have the capability to grow when the conditions are right. Pupae (caterpillars in their chrysalis) are another example of a living thing being in a dormant state

The system used to group and classify living things can be as simple as placing things into two groups (e.g., living/non-living, vertebrate/invertebrate, flowering plant/non-flowering plant etc.) or can be made much more complicated. A classification key is a set of questions about the characteristics of the living things which enables you to sort things. The more detailed the questions or criteria, the more refined your sorting will be. 

2. Identify plants and animals in their habitats 

Pupils need to know: 

• A variety of animals and plants and their habitats, including microhabitats

• How living things are suited to their environment, which provides them with what they need to survive and thrive

• In the competition for materials and energy resources, those that are better adapted are more likely to survive

Background science

A habitat is a place or environment where an organism lives naturally. There are a huge variety of habitats, including forests, grasslands, deserts, mountains, polar regions and aquatic habitats (including both saltwater and freshwater). There are, of course, significant variations within each of these broader groups. For example, forests can be tropical, temperate or boreal depending on where they are located on Earth, and their very different climates mean that they provide very different habitats and attract different organisms.

The four basic components of a habitat are: 

• Shelter: provides protection from the weather and predators, and provides plants too with somewhere to attach to grow or to put down roots

• Water: having a source of water is essential for all living things

• Food: all living things need energy and nutrition to survive and grow

• Space: different species need different amounts of space to thrive. This includes plants, which, for example, may need a large space underground to spread their roots or a lot of space in which to spread their leaves and absorb sunlight 

Organisms are found in habitats that have the best combination of these components to suit them and enable them to thrive. The common frog, for instance, is found in garden ponds in Britain, thriving in a habitat that provides freshwater (to drink, keep their skin moist and lay their eggs), insects to eat and shelter from predators (under plants or inside logs). 

A microhabitat is a small area that differs in some way from the larger surrounding habitat. It provides unique conditions that are particularly suited to a species that is not found in the larger area. A good example is a rock pool, which is home to a variety of plants, invertebrates and fish. Rock pools are isolated from the rest of the coastal habitat and are open to variations in the tides and seasons.

An ecosystem is a community or group of living organisms that live and interact with each other in a specific habitat.

3. The interdependence of living things 

Pupils need to know: 

• All living things depend on each other to survive

• Food chains and food webs can be created to illustrate the interdependence of living things

Background science

All the interactions between the variety of living things in a habitat create something called an ecosystem. All living things in an ecosystem depend on each other to survive (and hopefully thrive), providing sources of food and shelter for each other. This is called interdependence. Interdependence can be illustrated using food chains and food webs. A simple example in a woodland ecosystem:

Blackberries [are eaten by] caterpillars [are eaten by] shrews [are eaten by] owls

Interdependence means that there is a balance in an ecosystem and if there is a change in the numbers of one species in an ecosystem this will have a knock-on effect on the other species. So, in our simple woodland food chain, if the population of caterpillars decreased, then the number of blackberries would increase, as less would be eaten. Shrews might reduce in numbers, having lost one source of food, and this could then affect the owl population. Obviously, these animals will have more than one source of food so the change may not have a significant impact. However, in some ecosystems a small change can have a large impact.

4. Environmental change and its impact on living things

Pupils need to know: 

• The positive and negative impacts that humans have on the natural world

Background science

Human activity can have an impact on the balance of an ecosystem by affecting one or more of the four basic components of a habitat and altering the suitability of the habitat for all the species that live there. This can take place at different scales and be positive and negative. 

Smaller scale examples: 

• A hedgerow being removed from the edge of a field might mean that birds lose their nesting place and a source of food, plants that relied on its shelter are open to the elements and smaller animals that used it for cover from predators are at greater risk

• The introduction of bird boxes or the planting of trees in an area would provide shelter and trees would create a new ecosystem and a source of food for birds

Larger scale examples:

• Global heating (as a result of increased carbon emissions) is causing the Arctic sea ice that polar bears depend on to melt. If the polar bear population decreases, this will affect the seal and fish populations, which has further implications for the ecosystem in the Arctic region

• Creating nature reserves where the balance of the ecosystem can be carefully protected by monitoring and intervention protects a huge variety of plants and animals and improves biodiversity

5. The lifecycles of living things

Pupils need to know: 

• The differences in the life cycles of different plants and animals

• Different types of reproduction in some plants and animals

Background science

The life cycles of living things describe how they are born, develop to maturity, reproduce and die. Although each species has its own unique life cycle, there are broad similarities between the life cycles of different groups of organisms (i.e., mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, plants).

This video from BBC Teach provides an excellent introduction to the differences in the life cycles of these groups.

Most organisms reproduce sexually, where offspring are created from the sex cells of the male (sperm) and female (egg). Asexual reproduction, where the offspring only have one parent, occurs in some plants and fungi and a few animals (e.g., flatworms) and produces genetically identical offspring.

Ideas to try with your class  

Now you've got the tricky scientific concepts under your belt, try our ideas to help you explore living things and their habitats with your class in a way they will understand in part two of this topic guide!   

You can also take a look at the related topic guides for animals including humans, plants, evolution and inheritance. 

Image credit: Herd of elephants walking past a watering hole by cocoparisienne via Pixabay