Built for the First Days: teacher key

Baby Animals, grade 6 edition, written for 6th grade. A chick has an egg tooth, a tadpole swaps gills for lungs and a new butterfly pumps up its wings. See the tools young animals use to get started.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What does a chick use to peck through the shell?
   • A small, sharp egg tooth (answer)
   • Its claws
   • Its tail
2. What happens to a tadpole's gills as it becomes a frog?
   • They grow bigger
   • It loses them and grows lungs (answer)
   • They turn into legs
3. Why must a new butterfly wait before it can fly?
   • It must pump fluid into crumpled wings and let them dry (answer)
   • It must eat milkweed
   • It must shed its skin
4. Which baby is on its feet within an hour and often running?
   • A panda cub
   • A giraffe calf (answer)
   • A joey
5. What can you tell about a newly hatched chick's first days?
   • It lives on yolk and needs no food at first (answer)
   • It must hunt
   • It must swim
6. What does instar mean here?
   • A stage between molts (answer)
   • A kind of plant
   • A shell tooth

Words

• chrysalis: butterfly's resting case
• molting: shedding skin
• metamorphosis: big body change
• instar: growth stage
• yolk: egg food