Lesson Plan: Classification Biology • First Year of Secondary School
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to name and classify organisms and describe the importance of developments in biology to the classification system.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- recall the contributions of Aristotle and Linneaus to the study of classification and taxonomy,
- state the 5 kingdoms as animals, plants, fungi, protists, and prokaryotes,
- use the binomial system to name organisms according to their genus and their species,
- describe how organisms can be classified according to their physical appearance (artificial classification) or their evolutionary links (natural/phylogenetic classification),
- explain the benefits of classifying organisms into groups, including how it allows scientists to identify new species, determine evolutionary links, and predict characteristics of extinct or extant organisms,
- describe how genetic analysis has led to the 3-domain classification system.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- basic ideas of classification in the animal kingdom (e.g., humans are mammals).
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- the 6 or 7 kingdoms,
- the process of genetic analysis.
