You may have heard of the words "Class" or "Order" or "Species" and wondered what those terms mean. Biologists use these terms to build a hierarchy of living things. From the top of this hierarchy (most general) to the bottom of the hierarchy (most specific), living things are classified at eight levels, shown below.
Taxonomy of Living Things (classifications for Dog & American Beauty Rose):
Some people use a memory trick called a mneumonic (pronounced "new-MON-ic") to remember this order. For example, "Dumb King Philip Cried Over Failing Grade Six" is a mneumonic, where the first letter of each word is the same as the first letter of each word in the taxonomy of living things.
As scientists learn more about living things, the taxonomy may change. Or, specific living things may get re-assigned to different places in the taxonomy. Changes like these are just part of science. As scientists learn more about the world, their ideas and hypotheses change.
***Note for Teachers: You can access more information about this website and find other resources for science inquiry on the ISP Tutor website.
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The TED project was funded in part by the Institute of Education Science (IES), Grant R305H060034, and in part by the National Science Foundation, Grant SBE035442. The ISP Tutor project was funded by IES, Grant R305A170176.
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A170176 to Carnegie Mellon University (Klahr Lab). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.