Why an Opossum Plays Dead, Read and Answer

Ask your child to act out the steps of a behavior, like the skunk's warning, before ordering them. Check with the answer key.

Read why a frightened opossum goes stiff and gives off a bad smell, so many hunters walk away. A pouch is a pocket of skin on a mother animal's belly. The directions on the page read: Read the passage. Then, turn the page and answer the questions. On page 2: Circle the letter of the best answer for questions 1 to 3, and write the answers to questions 4 to 6 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 3rd Grade living things, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with behavioral adaptations. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

It is something an animal does that helps it survive, like a green iguana lying on a sunny branch in the cool morning so it can move quickly and digest its food. A structural adaptation is a body part instead, like a woodpecker's beak.

When an opossum is very frightened, it may fall over, go stiff and give off a bad smell, so it looks and smells like a dead animal. Many hunters only want to eat live animals they have caught, so they sniff it and walk away. Scientists think its body does this on its own.

They support NGSS 3-LS4-3, which asks children to argue that some animals survive well in a habitat and others do not. A gray squirrel stays awake all winter, so the nuts it buries in fall are what let it survive when snow covers the ground.

Yes. All 11 behavioral adaptations sheets have an answer key.