Environmental Change and Dangers to Living Things

Year 4 ScienceLiving Things and Their Habitats5 pages

About this worksheet

Bramble Copse Under Threat is the text at the centre of this five-page Year 4 comprehension. The passage contrasts natural seasonal changes with the damage from a new bypass road: torn-up hedgerows, oil and litter in the pond, and floodlights that blind barn owls. It ends with volunteers building a wildlife tunnel. Nine questions follow in three sections, from fact retrieval to a prediction about a housing estate on a wildflower meadow. The answer key gives model answers. It meets the England National Curriculum objective for Year 4 on changing environments.

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Curriculum objectives covered

Living things and their habitats

โ€œRecognise that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things.โ€

The text compares natural and human-made changes, and questions 2, 4, 7 and 9 ask pupils to explain the dangers to living things.

What's inside this worksheet

Bramble Copse Under Threat

A five-paragraph text about barn owls, hedgehogs and smooth newts in a copse, before and after the builders arrive.

Section 1: Retrieve (Finding Facts)

Four questions, including why hedgehogs needed the hedgerows, three true or false statements, and what happened to the oxygen in the pond.

Section 2: Infer (Reading Between the Lines)

Pupils explain hibernation, copy a phrase from paragraph 4, and say why sudden human-made changes are more dangerous than seasonal ones.

Section 3: Evaluate and Connect

Pupils show how people both harmed and helped Bramble Copse, then predict one danger and suggest one fix for a meadow near school.

How teachers use it

Science reading

Read the passage in a science lesson, and stop after paragraph 3 to ask what pupils think will happen to the hedgehogs.

Close to home

If there is building work near school, set question 9 on that site instead of the meadow.

Hedgehog highway

Follow up question 8 by designing a hedgehog gap for the school fence.

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