Classification: A Life Skill
Goal: To introduce students to classification as a useful skill in daily life.
Objectives: Students will demonstrate ability to:
- Define and give examples of classifications
- Explain the purposes of classifying items and information: organizing, storing, locating
- Group items according to their characteristics
- Use classification keys to locate and identify
- Apply what they have learned to classification exercises and everyday uses
Summary: Students will learn about ways to classify, uses for classification, and how to construct a key, in preparation for field identification and keying activities to follow.
Content Areas: All
Materials Needed:
Handout:
- How to Construct a Classification Key
- Classification Worksheet/ Evaluation
- Plants of the Mount St. Helens Lahar - Key (a sample dichotomous key.)
Evaluation: Have students discuss in small groups, then write short essay answers to questions on worksheet.
Instructional Sequence:
- Introduce the activity by reading/summarizing the following:
- Classification is the process of organizing things into groups. The ability to classify can be a valuable life skill for you.
- The concept of classification can be used in your life, your studies, and your home. You use a classification system to organize your term papers, books on a shelf, and clothes in a drawer. Classification systems are used in many different ways in t
he business world. Words are organized and stored in a dictionary and, to find a word, you use a classification system based on alphabetical order.
- Biologists organize and store data about organisms in a KEY. A key is a chart that groups organisms by their characteristics. This activity will give you an idea of how a key works.
- Imagine walking into a classroom and finding a pile of shoes and a group of shoeless students. Your task is to match the shoes to the correct student. It can be done fairly easily. All you need is a key like the one on your handout.
- To use the key, you start at number one and work to the right. As you come to each fork in the road, you make a choice based on the feature of the shoe. Eventually, by a process of deduction, you come to the owner.
- For example, you pick up a shoe. It has laces. That places you at 1A. The shoe is not brown. This is 2B. The shoe is white. That is 10B. The shoe has a high top. That is 14A and the owner is Marty. By doing this to every shoe, you can return
each shoe to its owner. You can make a key of shoes for our class, as well.
- Divide the class into groups of 10 or 12 students.
- Have each student take off one shoe and put it into a center pile.
- Divide the shoes into two piles. Every shoe in one group must have a feature that no shoe in the other group has. Write this distinguishing feature down as 1A on a chart similar to the handout. Its opposite, then, will be 1B.
- Ignore one pile of shoes for the time being. Pick another feature that allows you to divide the remaining pile of shoes into two smaller groups. Write this feature and its opposite after 1A as 2A and 2B.
- Repeat steps until each pile is reduced to one shoe, and the owner's name is filled-in on the chart
- Go back to the pile that was left behind and repeat the steps. If you are confused, study the key.
- To test the accuracy and clarity of your key, ask someone from another group to match one shoe to its owner. (Everyone should cover or remove and hide his/her remaining shoe.)
A sample classification key
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