• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (What plants and animals need to stay alive). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. How does a plant get its food? (It eats the soil. / It eats insects every day. / It makes its own food using sunlight, air and water. / People feed it bread.) → It makes its own food using sunlight, air and water.Prompt: Plants cannot walk to find food.
2. Needs of living things: which statement is true? (Only animals need water. / Animals can make food from sunlight. / Plants eat bugs to get all their food. / Animals need food, water, air and shelter.) → Animals need food, water, air and shelter.Prompt: Plants make food; animals eat food.
3. Who needs this, plants or animals: a safe place to hide from danger? (plants / animals) → animalsPrompt: Who makes its own food, and who has to find it?

• Show a food web and ask what would happen if one animal disappeared.
• Share the objective: How plants, animals and people change their surroundings. Read the success criteria together.

• Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
• Example: Who made this change: earthworms mixing the soil?
• Step 1: Animals dig, build and move things to meet their needs.
• Step 2: So the answer is: an animal
• Answer: an animal
• 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. Who made this change: planting a field of wheat? (a plant / an animal / people) → peoplePrompt: Is it something growing, an animal at work, or people building?
2. A beaver builds a dam across a stream. What changes? (The stream turns into ice. / Water backs up and makes a pond. / The trees grow faster. / Nothing changes.) → Water backs up and makes a pond.Prompt: What happens when you block water with a wall of sticks?

• 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. True or false? A bird's nest is made by the wind. (True / False) → FalsePrompt: Think of beavers, roots and builders.
2. A beaver builds a dam across a stream. What changes? (Nothing changes. / Water backs up and makes a pond. / The stream turns into ice. / The trees grow faster.) → Water backs up and makes a pond.Prompt: What happens when you block water with a wall of sticks?

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