This Kapow pupil video is part of the Kapow Science – Living things and their habitats scheme of work. It introduces pupils to Carl Linnaeus and how he created a universal system for sorting and classifying all living things, solving the confusion caused by scientists using different methods.

Linnaeus first grouped organisms into large categories called kingdoms, then into smaller and smaller groups based on shared characteristics. Using the tiger as an example, pupils follow its classification from kingdom through to species, learning how similarities increase as the groups get smaller. The video also explains Linnaeus’s binomial naming system, which combines the last two groups for a species name, such as Panthera tigris. Modern scientists now also use DNA analysis alongside physical characteristics to classify living things, building on Linnaeus’s original system.

The video is designed to be shown to pupils as part of Science, Upper key stage 2, Year 6, Living things: Classifying big and small, Lesson 1: Carl Linnaeus and classification