As part of their introduction to classification in Science, children had to think about how they could group different species based on specific characteristics. They first did this by grouping themselves based on gender, hair colour, eye colour, height and so on. We used this understanding to introduce branching keys and practically did this with the whole class. They took what they had learnt about this to create their own branching keys using pictures of animals and knowledge gained from previous years. Here's a couple of excellent examples:
