How Australian Animals Survive
Download a four-page Year 5 science worksheet on animal adaptations, covering structural features, behaviours and how Australian animals survive in their habitats.
- Subject
- Science
- Year group
- Year 5
- Curriculum topic
- Structural features and behaviours that help living things survive
- Download
About this resource
Ready to print, adapt and use.
This worksheet takes students from observing two animals in a photograph to explaining why particular features and behaviours help an animal survive. It opens with a platypus and an emu sharing a creek scene, then moves through habitat sorting, gap-fill clues about kangaroos and koalas, science vocabulary matching and multiple-choice reasoning.
Use it as supplied or edit the worksheet to feature animals from your own local area. The final questions ask students to explain rather than recall, including one that targets the common misconception that animals choose new features when they need them.
Teaching notes
The opening photo is worth spending time on, because students can see both animals in one habitat and compare them directly rather than working from memory. Ask what each animal would struggle with in the other's environment.
The distinction between a structural feature and a behaviour is the concept students most often blur, so the vocabulary matching is best done before the multiple choice rather than after. The bilby question is the one to discuss as a class: one distractor suggests animals choose a new feature when they need it, which is the misconception most likely to be sitting in the room.
If your class needs extending, ask them to choose a local animal and describe one structural feature and one behaviour that help it survive where you live.
Learning objectives
- Describe the structural features and behaviours of Australian animals.
- Explain how a feature or behaviour helps an animal survive in its habitat.
- Distinguish between a structural feature and a behaviour.
What’s included
- Four pages of classroom-ready activities
- School-safe imagery of animals
- Habitat sorting across desert, forest, waterways and ocean
- Gap-fill clues with a word bank
- Science vocabulary matching
- Multiple-choice reasoning questions
Example PDF
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