• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Variation within a group: read the data; Camouflage, warning colours and mimicry). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. Which survival trick is this: a snowy owl in snow? (camouflage (blending in) / warning colours / mimicry (copying another animal)) → camouflage (blending in)Prompt: Is the animal hiding, showing off a warning, or pretending to be something else?
2. Which survival trick is this: a wasp's yellow and black stripes? (camouflage (blending in) / warning colours / mimicry (copying another animal)) → warning coloursPrompt: Is the animal hiding, showing off a warning, or pretending to be something else?
3. Which survival trick is this: a stick insect on a twig? (camouflage (blending in) / warning colours / mimicry (copying another animal)) → camouflage (blending in)Prompt: Is the animal hiding, showing off a warning, or pretending to be something else?

• Show a microscope image of cells and ask what students think they are looking at.
• Share the objective: Evolution: how living things change over many generations. Read the success criteria together.

• Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
• Example: On the Galápagos Islands, Charles Darwin noticed finches with different beak shapes on different islands. What did this suggest?
• Step 1: Finches with beaks suited to the local food survived and passed on that beak shape.
• Step 2: So the answer is: Each kind had adapted to the food on its island.
• Answer: Each kind had adapted to the food on its island.
• Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

• Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
• Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.

1. On the Galápagos Islands, Charles Darwin noticed finches with different beak shapes on different islands. What did this suggest? (All finches are identical. / Beaks are painted by the sun. / The birds changed their beaks by choice. / Each kind had adapted to the food on its island.) → Each kind had adapted to the food on its island.Prompt: Big seeds need strong beaks; insects need thin ones.
2. True or false? An animal can change its body by wanting to, and pass that on. (True / False) → FalsePrompt: Variation, survival and inheritance over many generations.

• Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
• Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 8 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

• Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

1. Mary Anning found fossils of sea reptiles on the English coast in the 1800s. Why were her finds important? (They showed that living things very different from today's once existed and became extinct. / They showed dinosaurs lived with people. / They proved the sea was always the same. / They were made of gold.) → They showed that living things very different from today's once existed and became extinct.Prompt: What did her ichthyosaur look like compared with animals alive today?
2. True or false? Living things have changed over time. (True / False) → TruePrompt: Variation, survival and inheritance over many generations.

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/science/grade-5.