How Scientists Classify Today

Lesson Goal

Students will name the five kingdoms and the questions that tell them apart, tell prokaryotes from eukaryotes, and sort one animal through the seven levels from kingdom to species.

Side by Side, Not Blended

Classification is a tool for sorting and finding, and both accounts of origins use it the same way. The textbook also treats the groups as a record of evolutionary history, which it calls phylogeny. The lesson states that reading in one paragraph and states the other reading beside it: the same patterns of likeness read as one Designer's plan.

The student is not asked which to hold. The questions are about the kingdoms and the levels.

Key Concepts

A kingdom is decided by four questions: does it have a nucleus, is it one cell or many, does it make its own food, and does it move.

The seven levels run from the broadest, kingdom, to the narrowest, species. Each step down has more in common and fewer organisms.

Added From the Record

That many books today count six kingdoms or three domains, the wolf's middle levels, that some fungi are single-celled, and one sentence on how people who hold creation fit the Bible's kinds against the seven levels are added from the record. The book's own parts are the four questions, the five kingdoms, the prokaryote and eukaryote split, the seven levels and the wolf's genus and species.

Key Vocabulary

Phylogeny

In the textbook, an organism's evolutionary history, used to help decide where it belongs in a classification.

Prokaryote

An organism whose cells have no organized nucleus, such as a bacterium.

Eukaryote

An organism whose cells have a true nucleus and membrane-bound parts.

Phylum

The level just below kingdom. In plants and fungi it is called a division.