• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Environments change: human impact). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. Does this help or harm wildlife: spilling oil into rivers? (helps wildlife / harms wildlife) → harms wildlifePrompt: Does it make habitats bigger and cleaner, or smaller and dirtier?
2. Why is cutting down large areas of rainforest a problem? (Trees grow back in a day / Rainforests have no animals / It makes more rain / Many animals and plants lose their habitat) → Many animals and plants lose their habitatPrompt: Where would the animals that lived in the trees go?
3. Which action harms wildlife? (recycling plastic / creating a nature reserve / dumping plastic in the sea / planting native trees) → dumping plastic in the seaPrompt: Think about what happens to habitats.

• Show a food web and ask what would happen if one animal disappeared.
• Share the objective: Living and non-living factors in an ecosystem. Read the success criteria together.

• Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
• Example: Is this a biotic or an abiotic factor: an invasive species?
• Step 1: Biotic factors come from other living things.
• Step 2: So the answer is: biotic (living)
• Answer: biotic (living)
• 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. Is this a biotic or an abiotic factor: an invasive species? (abiotic (non-living) / biotic (living)) → biotic (living)Prompt: Does it come from a living organism?
2. Students placed quadrats in a line leading out from under a tree. Light intensity (% of full sunlight) → number of daisies: 10 % → 3 30 % → 6 50 % → 9 70 % → 12 90 % → 15 Which conclusion do the data support? (The data prove that light is the only factor that matters. / Daisies grow best in the shade. / The tree eats the daisies. / More daisies grow where light intensity is higher.) → More daisies grow where light intensity is higher.Prompt: Look at how the number of daisies changes as light changes.

• 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. Warmer ocean water causes corals to lose the algae living inside them (bleaching). Which factor changed? (predators, a biotic factor / light, which disappeared / temperature, an abiotic factor / the number of fish) → temperature, an abiotic factorPrompt: What is rising because of climate change?
2. Students placed quadrats in a line leading out from under a tree. Light intensity (% of full sunlight) → number of daisies: 90 % → 21 70 % → 16 50 % → 11 30 % → 6 10 % → 1 Which conclusion do the data support? (More daisies grow where light intensity is higher. / Daisies grow best in the shade. / Light has no link with the number of daisies. / The data prove that light is the only factor that matters.) → More daisies grow where light intensity is higher.Prompt: Look at how the number of daisies changes as light changes.

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/science/grade-6.