Year 5: Animals, including humans
This list consists of lesson plans, activities and video clips to support the teaching of Animals, including humans at Year Five. It contains tips on using the resources, suggestions for further use and background subject knowledge. Possible misconceptions are highlighted so that teachers may plan lessons to facilitate correct conceptual understanding. Designed to support the new curriculum programme of study it aims to cover many of the requirements for knowledge and understanding and working scientifically. The statutory requirements are that children are taught to:
• describe the changes as humans develop to old age.
As this topic looks at stages in the lifecycle of a human it could be taught together with the topic Year 5: Living things and their habitats which looks at lifecycles and reproduction.
Visit the primary science webpage to access all lists.
How do humans change during their lifetime?
A short clip which shows the different stages of a human life-cycle.
Animal Gestation Periods
This worksheet compares the gestation periods of various animals. Children complete a table using secondary sources of information which look at gestation period, average number of offspring and the life span of the animal. They then answer questions which look at patterns in the data and go on to predict the length of gestation and number of offspring for different sized animals.
Human Species
This resource contains six activities that link to Animals including humans, it could be taught in line with SRE as it covers puberty. These resources are designed for use with mixed age groups classes of Year 5 and 6, but the activities linked to the Year 5 curriculum can be used in a Year 5 only class. These include:
- exploring gestation periods and foetal development – identifying patterns in growth.
- identifying the changes that boys and girls go through during puberty, sorting changes into physical and emotional, as well as boys, girls and both genders.
- researching changes that happen as we age, creating a visual timeline of key events in the human life cycle
