Mississippi Science ZOO.10.1
The Standard
- ZOO.10
- Students will understand the structure and function of phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, and how they demonstrate the characteristics of living things.
Understand the characteristics and behaviors that distinguish mammals from other phyla and use characteristics and behaviors to distinguish the major orders, including primates. Explain how human impact has changed the environments of other organisms.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify mammals by traits such as hair and milk production. They sort mammals into orders using features such as grasping hands, growing front teeth, and wing membranes. They explain how roads or tree clearing change animals' access to food and shelter.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given animal fact cards, a student identifies a platypus as a mammal despite its eggs. They place bats, rodents, and primates in the right orders and cite a trait for each. They explain how a forest road could separate chimpanzees from feeding areas.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may call bats birds because they fly or reject platypuses as mammals because they lay eggs. They may mistake any meat-eating animal for a member of the carnivoran order. They may see a road as a loss of trees but miss how it blocks movement between feeding areas.
How to Assess It
- Give students trait cards for a pigeon, bat, squirrel, and chimpanzee, plus a photo of a forest road. Ask which animals are mammals, which orders they belong to, and how the road might affect chimpanzees.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Sort printed platypus, pigeon, bat, mouse, and chimpanzee fact cards by mammal traits, then group the mammals by order.
Write two sentences explaining how a road through chimpanzee habitat could change the troop's travel and access to food.
Play mystery mammal: read clue cards about grasping fingers, growing incisors, wing membranes, or slicing teeth; teams name the order.
On a satellite image of a forest road, mark two tree patches and trace where a squirrel might cross.
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Printable ZOO.10.1 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- ZOO.10.4
Describe characteristics that make primates unique, including investigating how the center of gravity relates to the evolution of bipedalism.
- ZOO.10
Students will understand the structure and function of phylum Chordata, class Mammalia, and how they demonstrate the characteristics of living things.
- MAQ.6.7
Using key morphological and physiological adaptations found within animal taxa, assess how animals interact with their environment to determine their ecological...
- ZOO.10.6
Explain how human impacts have changed the environment of aquatic and terrestrial organisms (e.g., habitat destruction, urbanization, and climate change).
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