Students learn about sustainability in their local area through the lens of 'giving' to each other, and to their environment. A literacy focus is embedded through writing an explanation text.
Science, English, Giving, Literacy, Environment, Sustainability
Outcomes for this learning module have come from the Australian Curriculum, version 8.
Our focus in this learning module:
During "Meet and Greet" with the whole unit, watch the teachers role play scenarios.
What are you thinking?
Return to your class.
Learning Intention: To connect a personal experience.
Timed Think-Pair-Share about a time when you did something kind for someone else.
What was it? How did that person feel? How did you feel? Draw and/or write about this time on the left hand side of the T-Chart.
| Giving to Someone | Someone Giving to Me |
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Timed Think-Pair-Share about a time when someone did something for you.
What did they do? How did you feel? Draw and write about this time on the right hand side of the T-Chart.
Giving - Prior Knowledge
Purpose
The purpose of the scenario is to introduce the concept of 'giving' through the analogy of the buckets which comes from the focus text and for students to share their personal experiences of 'giving'.
Resources
Teaching Tips
Role play a scenario that students can relate to such as playground/classroom experiences of put ups and put downs to convey feelings and effects and link to full bucket/empty bucket idea.
For the "What are you thinking?" activity, randomly select a few students to share their thinking. Then return to class groups to explore further.
Australian Curriculum
Personal and Social Capability
Understand relationships
English
Foundation
Language: Understand that language can be used to explore ways of expressing needs, likes and dislikes (ACELA1429)
Literacy:
Year 1:
Literacy:
Learning Intention: To predict events in a story.
Look at the front cover and read the title of the story.
Timed Think-Pair-Share: What do you think the story will be about?
Share your partner's response with the class.
Look at the pictures as the teacher does a picture flick of the text. Share your wonderings and thoughts with the class.
Listen as your teacher reads the story, 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?'
Learning Intention: To identify the main ideas in a text.
What are you thinking about? How did it make you feel? What does a full bucket symbolise/mean? How can you get a full bucket? If you fill someone's bucket, why does yours become full too?
Purpose
The purpose of this Update is to introduce students to the concept of giving and its effects through the focus text, 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?'
The open-ended questions are designed to encourage students to respond and to think for themselves. This is important to address diversity.
Resources
Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids by Carol McCloud, illustrated by David Messing. See The Bucketfillers website.
Teaching Tips
Asking students to recall and share their partner's response to questions in a Timed Think-Pair-Share promotes accountability and gives a message that all students ideas and contributions are valued.
Australian Curriculum
Personal and Social Capability - Understand relationships
English
Foundation
Language: Understand that language can be used to explore ways of expressing needs, likes and dislikes (ACELA1429)
Literacy
Year 1:
Literature: Discuss characters and events in a range of literary texts and share personal responses to these texts, making connections with students' own experiences (ACELT1582)
Literacy:
Learning Intention: To learn to make connections between my life and the story.
Timed Think-Pair-Share: What does the term 'Bucket Filler' and 'Bucket Dipper' mean?
As a class discuss ideas. Your teacher will record our shared ideas of the different ways the people in the story demonstrated/showed giving.
Using pictures from the text, complete a sorting activity into the category of 'Bucket Filler' or 'Bucket Dipper'.
Now think about yourself and actions with others. What sort of person do you want to be?
Use a four frame to draw four different ways you can be a Bucket Filler.
| Come and play with us | Your Bucket Fillers |
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The big ideas around giving
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to delve deeper into the meaning of the text using the connecting strategy.
Resources
On the whiteboard, create a T-Chart for Bucket Filler and Bucket Dipper. The sorting activity can reinforce this. Copy images from "Have you Filled a Bucket Today? for students to sort.
| Bucket Filler | Bucket Dipper |
For the four frame outline students can divide their class book page into four.
Teaching Tips
Reading Strategy: Connecting
This is what good readers do. They bring their prior knowledge and understanding to the text to make meaning. Use the meta-language of connecting and explicitly inform students, this is what good readers do to make meaning of a text.
Record students responses of the ways the characters/people demonstrated 'giving' or 'dipping' in the story.
Use the Timed Think-Pair-Share-Square strategy to engage students in discussions about the concept of 'Giving'.
Australian Curriculum
Foundation
Literature: Share feelings and thoughts about the events and characters in texts (ACELT1783)
Year 1
Literature: Discuss characters and events in a range of literary texts and share personal responses to these texts, making connections with students' own experiences (ACELT1582)
Learning Intention: To understand how giving affects us.
Mirrors Activity
Now stand facing partner. Show your facial expression and gestures using your hands to the following situations. You can show the same facial expressions and gestures or you can show different ones. Remember to support your partner by giving them positive feedback on the facial expressions and gestures they show to you.
In a Timed-Pair-Share, talk about which one was better - giving or receiving?
Thank you partner for working with you.
Whole Class Reflection:
Who thought giving was best? Who thought receiving was best? Who liked both? Does giving fill your bucket? Does receiving fill your bucket?
When people smile and give you positive feedback through their facial expressions and gestures, how do you feel?
Now let's look at bucket dipping.
Face your partner again. Show your facial expressions and gestures when:
In a Timed-Pair-Share, talk about which one made you feel bad - when you were a bucket dipper or when someone was dipping into your bucket?
Thank you partner for working with you.
Whole Class Reflection
How do you feel when someone is a "bucket dipper" towards you? How do you feel when you are a "bucket dipper" towards someone else?
What is the best way to make friends and to be a good friend - bucket filling or bucket dipping?
Impacts of Giving
The purpose of this activity is for students to deepen their understanding of giving by demonstrating the positive impact that giving has on themselves and others through facial expressions and gestures.
Suggestion: Take photos of the gestures of the children and display them to refer to throughout the learning module. Group similar gestures for emphasis and try to ensure that each child is represented. The children could sort the photographs to reinforce their understanding of the positive effects of giving.
Australian Curriculum
Drama
Foundation to Year 2
Explore role and dramatic action in dramatic play, improvisation and process drama (ACADRM027)
Use voice, facial expression, movement and space to imagine and establish role and situation (ACADRM028)
Learning Intention: To understand what giving is.
As a class listen to the song 'Fill Your Bucket', by The Learning Station to activate prior knowledge.
Fill Your Bucket Song
In small groups or as a class complete the 'Y-Chart' recording your ideas of what giving looks like, sounds like and feels like.
Learning Intention: To define giving and the different types of giving.
What is 'Giving?'
As a class create a definition for the term 'Giving'.
Select a picture from the 'Giving' case. What type of giving is it showing? Sort pictures into the 'giving' categories in the labelled hoops on the floor. Discuss and explain why you have placed the picture in which hoop.
Giving - Types of giving
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to
This will support students when they actively take on a role of 'giving to the community' as an applying task of their learning (end of unit performance - Amala Aged Care Facility).
Resources
Bucket Filler song link
Pictures of acts of giving including giving to self, others and the community.
CD player and music. A Box/Case (for pictures)
Images of 'giving' for use on SmartBoard.
Y-Chart template, 3 different coloured textas/pencils.
Teaching Tips
These activities could occur over two teaching and learning sessions allowing time after each to reflect and consolidate what has been learned.
Activity 1.
As a class, record students ideas on a Y-Chart. Use three different coloured pencils/textas to record responses.
Use the Y-Chart to draw out ideas and understandings to write a class definition of the term 'Giving'.
Activity 2.
Whole Class:
Set up three labelled hoops explaining different categories of giving (self, others and commmunity). Before inviting students to select a picture from the 'Giving Case', model an example of each. Discuss the picture as a class and justify placement in the 'Giving' category. Play music, when the music stops, a child selects a picture from the giving case and places it in the correct category (hoop). Ensure each student has a picture to sort (inclusivity).
Individually:
Students are given a template with the three categories and pictures of giving to sort.
Australian Curriculum
Personal and Social Capability - Contribute to civil society
Learning Intention: To uncover the author's message in a text
Timed Think-Pair-Share: Who is this book written for? Why did the author write this book?
With your partner discuss the following questions.
When I give to others, who wins/benefits? Why?
When others give to me, who wins/benefits? Why?
Are there any losers in giving? Why/Why not?
What is the author trying to tell us?
Giving - Everyone wins
Re-read the text to the class.
The purpose of this task is for students to understand that authors write for real purposes and that books can hold a special message for us. Posing discussion questions that interrogate an author's purpose may be challenging for some students. Teachers may need to use the think-aloud strategy tmodel how they think about an author's message.
The purpose is also to identify that there are only winners when it comes to acts of giving; both the person doing the giving and the person receiving.
Resources
Use the buckets as a symbol of 'giving' for students to create a visual image to answer and explain their reasoning.
Teaching Tips
Refer students back to the pictures they drew of 'giving' in Update 1 to support them. Students will come to the conclusion that there is only winners in giving; both for the giver and receiver. There are no losers in the act of giving.
Australian Curriculum
Personal and Social Capability - Understand relationships
English
Foundation
Literacy:
Year 1:
Literacy:
Learning Intention: To demonstrate an act of giving to others.
Each day, from the 'Giving' List, select an act of giving that you will focus on for the day. At the end of the day, reflect on how you went and share your 'act of giving' with the class.
Giving to Others
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to put into practice their understanding of 'Giving' to help others at school; class, unit and the wider school community.
Teaching Tips
Every morning ask a student (Star of Day, own selection idea) in a Circle time format, to choose a random act of giving (from list). At the end of the school day re-form as a circle to share acts of giving OR as a journal activity (by drawing a picture) and captioning or teacher scribing.
Australian Curriculum
Personal and Social Capability
Contribute to civil society
Understand relationships
Learning Intention: To be a bucket filler.
Select a class member's name from a hat or tub. Make them a card and write a build up for them. Post the card in the class letter box. Letters/cards will be delivered at the end of the week.
Or
Select a class member's name from a hat or tub. This will be your secret buddy for the week. Perform random acts of kindness 'Giving'. Make your buddy a card and post it in the class post box. At the end of the week you will have the opportunity to guess who your secret buddy was.
Or
You might be selected to be the Star of the Week/Day. Answer questions about yourself (i.e. pets, favourite colour etc) that the teacher records on an outline. At the end, in a circle format with a talking tool, other students can offer a positive comment about you to be recorded. Make into class book.
Giving to others
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to experience first hand what it feels like to be a bucket filler and the impact it has on others.
Resources
Writing paper, envelopes, coloured pens/pencils/textas/ glitter pens.
Star of the Week/Day Outline
Learning Intention: To make and share a personal connection.
Draw a picture of what you use water for. Share your picture with a friend, and then with the class.
As a class, think about what you know about water.
What do I want to know about water? Is there something interesting that want to find out about water. Record your question on a cloud of wonder or verbally share it with the class.
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to
Resources
A3 paper, magazines, newspapers, scissors and glue.
Teaching Tips
Water usage:
Make a display of students' pictures.
Clouds of wonder - Students are each given a cloud to write something they 'wonder' about regarding water.
Learning Intention: To make a personal connection.
In a Timed Think-Pair-Share, share with a partner your thinking of what happens to water once it goes down the plug hole.
Prediction: Draw a picture to show your understanding of what happens to our water when we flush the toilet or pull the plug in the sink. Where does the water go?
Viewing
Learning Intention: To respond to a text and recall key information
1) As a class we are going to watch a DVD about where our water goes once it leaves our homes and schools.
Think-Pair-Share: What did you find interesting? What did you learn? What would you like to know more about?
OR
2) Listen as your teacher reads the story, 'The Drop'.
Think-Pair-Share: What did you find interesting? What did you learn? What would you like to know more about?
Guest Speaker: Source to Sewer
Today we have a guest speaker from ACTEWAGL(local water and electricity authority) to talk to us about the urban water cycle 'Source to sewer' - where our water goes once it leaves our homes or school.
As you listen to the guest speaker think about some questions you might like to ask? What did you find interesting? What do you want to know more about?
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What happens to our water after we flush or pull the plug?
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to
The Magic School Bus DVD - focuses on water in the catchment area, the filtration system where the water is cleaned and then returned to our homes.
Resources
DVD - The Magic School Bus - Wet all over.
Text - The Drop (if this is not available then use The Water Cycle by Bre Carpenter.
Teaching Tips
During the Mix-Pair-Share, provide students with the opportunity to share their ideas with several students before sharing with the class.
Whilst reading the text or at the end of the text, fill out Clouds of Wonder to record students thinking.
The guest speaker from the local water authority will bring in water samples from each stage of the urban water cycle so that students have the opportunity to investigate the water quality at various stages along the water cycle.
Learning Intention: To find out where our water goes to.
We are learning about what happens to our water when we pull the plug. The journey the water takes is called the urban water cycle. As a class we will create a flowchart (in the form of a mural) of the urban water cycle.
Water systems; a sewerage system and a storm water system.
View the video footage of the talk from the guest speaker about the Urban Water Cycle. Draw a story map to show the steps of the urban water cycle. label your story map with key words such as catchment, reservoir, pipes, tap etc. Write to explain each step of the cycle.
Option 2. Individually or in pairs, sequence the urban water cycle; starting from the water going down the sink in our homes/ school, back to clean water coming through our taps.
OR
Write a written explanation of the urban water cycle, sequencing pictures and explaining each step in the process.
Flowchart of the urban water cycle
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to name, sequence and explain each stage of the urban water cycle and the purpose of each step in the cycle.
Resources
Images and Definitions for Urban Water Cycle class display.
Urban water cycle name cards and pictures 2 - pictures include reservoirs, household supply, wastewater system, wastewater treatment
Teaching Tips
Make a class mural (flowchart) of the sewerage and storm water systems to be displayed in the classroom. Each step should include a picture, a label and a brief description. Canberra is serviced by 2 water systems; a stormwater system and a sewerage system.
Sewerage System
The sewerage system takes waste water and products to from our home and schools to be cleaned. From when the water goes down the sink it travels the following journey:
Stormwater system:
These systems collect all of the run-off water from rain, such as from roads, parks and from the gutters in roofs. This water drains into lakes, rivers or the sea. Canberra is serviced by a separate storm water system designed to collect run-off rainwater and direct it into the city's lakes and rivers.
Students are given a collection of pictures from each stage of the urban water cycle. Individually or in pairs, students order the pictures correctly. Provide an option to write a short description next to each picture.
Extension - Students order the pictures and then write to explain the journey water takes once it leaves our homes.
Learning Intention: To gain more understanding of how the urban water cycle works.
Think-Pair-Share: What would happen if we removed a part of the urban water cycle?
For example, what would happen if there was no sewerage treatment plant? What would the water be like? What would this mean for us?
Draw or write to show your thinking and consequences of what this might mean for you as a consumer of water.
Importance of the Sequence
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to think critically about each stage of the urban water cycle and what would happen if one part of the cycle wasn't working.
Teaching Tips
To support students in their thinking; to go deeper, remove different pictures from the urban water cycle sequence and discuss the importance of each and the impact if it is removed.
Learning Intention: To analyse critically the importance of clean water and its impact on people's health and well being.
Watch a short video clip about water for human use in Rwanda, East Africa.
Timed-Think-Pair-Share: What did you learn from the video?
Whole Class Reflection
What did you notice about the water quality? Was the water clean? How did you know? Why or why not? Where did their drinking water come from? What else can it be used for?
Let's create a Pros and Cons chart about clean and dirty water.
| + Pros of Clean Water | - Cons of Dirty Water |
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What happens we don't have clean water to use and drink?
If we had dirty water, how will this affect have on me? On my health, clothes, teeth?
Now draw a picture of yourself and/or a child from Africa showing how you look and feel when you have clean water. You can label your drawing if you like.
Importance of Clean Drinking Water
Purpose
The purpose is to critically think about the importance of clean water and the impact it has on our health.
Teaching Tips
| Pros of clean water | Cons of dirty water |
| keeps teeth clean, clean hair, clean body smell, nice, organs are happy/healthy | water has germs that will affect your health, smelly, dirty hair and clothes |
Example
Learning Intention: To understand why water is important for survival.
Think-Pair-Share
Who needs water to survive?
What animals live in water?
Mix-Pair-Share
Where do you find water around Canberra?
All living things need water to survive
Purpose
To idenitfy
Teaching Tips
Divide a page into two columns, one for each question; Who needs water to survive? and What animals live in water? Record student responses on a class chart to be displayed.
MIX PAIR SHARE
1. Students silently mix around the room. NO TALKING!
2. Teacher calls “pair.”
3. Students pair up with the person closest to them and
shake hands. Students who haven’t found a partner
raise their hand to find each other.
4. Teacher asks a question and gives think time.
5. Students share with their partner per teacher instructions.
Music could be played while students move around the room
Learning Intention: To identify and define living and non-living things.
Living/non living:
Look at the image of a pond again.
What can you see?
How can we tell if something is living or non-living?
Place your post-it note into either the column marked living or non-living and tell me why you have placed it there.
What are the key characteristics of living things?
Let's write a class definition to define the terms living and non-living.
Using the class definition of living and non-living to help you, sort the images into the 2 categories living and non-living. Justify your placement.
Purpose
To identify define living and non living things.
Living things have a life cycle. It is at this time that 'life cycles' (focus - frogs) as an explanation text is explicitly taught.
See documented explanation text at end of this unit. It is to be taught concurrently from this point on in the unit of work during literacy time.
Resources
Image of 'living and non-living' learning activity
ONE STRAY
At the completion of a team task, teacher calls on one student from each team to stand.
1. Teacher directs standing students to move to a team with an empty seat.
2. Student who moved compares his/her team's answers with the new team's answers.
3. On teacher’s cue, students move back to their original teams. Teams discuss answers that they got from others.
4. If there is a discrepancy, teams may rework problems,change answers, or stick with their original answer.
Use an image of a pond with surrounding wildlife. Ask students what they can see in and around the pond and record their responses on a post-it note (birds, bugs, trees etc).
Create two columns on the board labelled living and non living.
Ask students to place the post-it notes into one of the columns and explain why they have placed it there.
Define: What makes it living.
Living things breathe, move, grow and reproduce.
Display definition of living things with examples as well as non living with an annotation.
Independently or with a partner, students complete a sorting activity where they have to sort a range of visual images into categories of living or non living, justifying their placemat.
Australian Curriculum
Learning Intention: To make a personal connection
Imagine you are out walking and you come across this beautiful clean pond. Using your senses what might you see, smell and hear at the pond? Share your thoughts with a shoulder partner.
You keep walking and you come across a pond filled with rubbish.
When you see all this rubbish how do you feel?
How did the rubbish get here?
Timed Think-Pair-Share: What do you think the rubbish could do to the pond environment?
Discovering the Problem
The purpose of this scenario is to engage students in the events that they will read about in the text Lester and Clyde and introduce the effects human actions can have on the environment.
Resources
Using blue fabric and toy frogs set up a model pond environment (clean, fresh). Play pond/ nature environment music to set the scene. Teacher tells a story about the environment, who lives here, sounds heard – sets the scene.
Invite students to comment on the model/ environment. (Sensory journey - sounds like, smells like, looks like, feels like)
Teacher tips rubbish over the frogs and into the pond. Invite students to respond using their senses.
Students make a prediction of what might happen next to the frogs and the pond environment.
Australian Curriculum
Learning Intention: To connect with the text
Timed Think-Pair-Share: What do you know about frogs? Where do frogs live?
Listen as your teacher reads Lester and Clyde.
How did the story make you feel? What are you thinking? Share your thoughts with a shoulder partner, then the class.
Purpose
To connect with the text sharing prior knowledge about frogs and responding to events in the story.
Resources
Lester & Clyde by James H. Reece (Ashton Scholastic 1991)
Teaching tips
Give a set time, e.g. 45sec for students to think about their response before sharing with their partner. For accountability ask students to share their partner's response or their own.
Learning Intention: To understand what the visuals in the text are saying.
In your group look at the picture of either the dirty or clean pond from the text. In a Round Robin, observe and discuss what you see and what is happening in the picture.
Use your senses to record your thoughts and feelings, what does it Look like? sound like? feel like? smell/taste like? Write and/or draw your thoughts in the Sensory safari X-chart.With your group members create a sound-scape of what your pond environment (clean/ polluted) might sound like. You can use musical instruments, your voice or classroom objects to create sound effects.
Look at the images from "Lester and Clyde". Using speech bubbles record what you think the characters are thinking/saying as they look at the pond.
 Clean Pond
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 Dirty Pond
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Visual Literacy/Inferring from text: "Lester and Clyde"
Purpose
To identify and compare the pond environment before and after humans have interacted with it and for students to understand the negative effects our actions can have on the natural environment.
The purpose of this activity is for students to infer how the characters are feeling and their reactions to the rubbish from visual images.
Resources
Images of clean and dirty pond from "Lester and Clyde".
Teaching Tips
Students examine and compare the illustrations on pages 4 (clean pond) and 32 (dirty pond) from "Lester and Clyde". Students work in mixed ability groups to complete a Sensory Safari on either a clean pond or a dirty pond picture from the text.
Show students page 34 and 35 of "Lester and Clyde" to model the inferring strategy of characters feelings and thoughts. Model what do I see? what do I infer? focusing on character reactions in images.
Divide students into mixed ability pairs and provide students with images from "Lester and Clyde" (remove the text). Give 2 groups the same image so that they can compare inferences at the end. Provide students with speech bubbles and ask them to record what they think the characters are thinking/saying in the bubbles (p.9, 14 – calm relaxed etc. 26, 27, 28, 34, 37 - concerned, upset etc)
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Learning Intention: To identify the cause and a possible solution to the problem.
Look at the pictures on pages 34 and 35 of Lester and Clyde.
Who is responsible for the mess? Why?
Who is responsible for keeping it clean? Why?
How could it be kept clean?
Taking Responsibility for our Environment
Purpose
The purpose of this activity is for students to identify who is responsible for caring for the environment and what can be done to achieve this.
Teaching Tips
Students form two circles – one circle within the other - with students facing each other.
Pose a question to the students or make a statement and ask student what they think about it. Allow them some thinking time. One student shares his/her thinking and then the other student build on his/her ideas. Students in one of the circles then move one or more steps to the right or left. The teacher then poses the next question or statement, allowing time for thinking and sharing, before asking one of the circles to move again. Vary the activity by asking students to move and then share what they discussed in the previous rotation with their new partner.
Learning Intention: To identify the author's message in the story.
Listen as your teacher re-reads page 44 to 47. Focus on the statement on page 46 and 47,
… until man comes along.
What does the author mean by this?
What is his message?
Who is this book for?
Do all our actions have harmful effects?
Create a cause and effect wheel about our effects on the environment.
Who gains and who loses?
 Fig. 20a: Clean Pond
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 Fig. 20b: Dirty Pond |
Until man comes along
Purpose
To analyse the purpose and intended audience of "Lester and Clyde".
To investigate who gains and who loses based on the choices we make.
Resources
Page 15. Write all about it!
Practical activities for the classroom.
Cause and effect wheel template.
Teaching Tips
Consequences/Effects Wheels
In the centre circle, write an event, for example, ‘Widespread use of solar energy’ Think of and write a direct consequence of this event in an oval and connect it to the centre with a single line. This is a first order consequence. Think of some other first order consequences and draw/write them in. Think of and record second order consequences. These are things that resulted from the first order consequence. Join it to first order consequences by a double line. This tool can be used in analysing critically to examine environmental and societal impacts.
Learning Intention: To identify ways that we can give to Gordon Pond.
Let's look at a photograph of Gordon Pond. Who has played there? What is your favourite on the playground equipment? Who has seen animals at the pond? Who has seen litter at the pond? Where does this litter come from?
Now let's think about what happens when children drop litter at Gordon Primary School.
Where does it go? What would happen if our rubbish blew out of the school and into the drains? Where would it end up? Who or what would be harmed?
Where should it go?
What are some ways we could help Gordon Pond?
Reflection: Write and draw about your act of giving to Gordon Pond. Who or what are the winners?
Giving to the community
Purpose
To identify the positive impact humans can have on the natural environment.
To acknowledge the contributions made by the students to their local environment
Resources
Rubbish bags, disposable gloves, long tongs
Teaching tips
Photograph the contributions made by the students to improve their local environment. Use these to prompt student reflections and then to create a class display titled Giving to Gordon Pond
Learning Intention: To share your prior knowledge about frogs.
Mix-Pair -Share: What do you know about frogs? Where do they live? What do they eat? How do frogs grow? Who likes frogs? Why/why not.
Learning intention: To identify the lifecycle of a frog.
Watch the videoclip.
Then watch the Froggy Song about the frog's lifecycle.
Now let's illustrate the four stages of a lifecycle of a frog.
Together, we will label each stage of the frog's lifecycle.
Reflect: How can we help to make the ponds clean for the frogs? Would frogs be able to survive in dirty water? Would they lay their eggs?
Purpose
The purpose of the initial activity is to find out what students know about frogs.
The next focus is on identifying the stages of the life cycle of a frog. Show the videoclips a number of times. The musical one uses more technical language and will support the labelling activity.
For ideas for play-based activities and/or reinforcement of their conceptual understanding, see Frog Life Cycle Activities for Children- Sensory bin fun! Safari LTD. It involves figurines and laminated cards.
Learning Intention: To demonstrate understanding of learning to others an a creative way
We are going to have the opportunity to perform our explanation of the life cycle of a frog at our unit assembly.
You will need to think about props, costumes and speaking roles for each part.
Performing the Life Cycle of a Frog
Purpose
For students to share their understanding of explanation texts by performing the life cycle of a frog to an audience.
Resources
Posters, props, costumes and life cycle/ explanation script.
Teaching Tips
Choose speakers for the following parts
- Title
- Identifying statement
- Explanation sequence
- Summary statement
The original version of this learning module, Water, Me and My Environment, was written by Robyn Kiddy, Emily Howland and Annie McAppion. This new version was adapted for the children at Gordon Primary School who were mainly kindergarten students.
Title: (Source). Fig. 1: Bucket photograph by Peasap (Source); Fig. 2: Have you filled a bucket today? (Source); Fig. 3: Children playing ball silhouette (Source); Fig. 4: "SURPRISE" by Westsara - Own Work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons (Source); Fig.5: Bucket Song (Source); Fig. 6: Kindness (Source); Fig. 7 and Fig. 8: Photographs by Bonython Primary School teachers; Fig. 9: Clouds of Wonder (Source); Fig. 10: Blue Drop (Source); Fig. 13: Water in Africa clip (Source); Fig. 14: "Winslow Homer - Mink Pond" by Winslow Homer - The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 125082. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - (Source); Fig. 15: (Source); Fig. 16a and b: Photographs by Bonython Primary School teachers. Fig. 17: Lester and Clyde (Source); Fig. 18: Images from Lester and Clyde (Source); Fig. 19 a: Clean Pond (Source); Fig. 21b: Dirty Pond (Source); Fig. 20a and b: Gordon pond and Drain next to Gordon Primary School: Photographs by Sue Gorman; Fig. 21a: Frog Life Cycle (Source); Fig. 21b: Froggy Froggy Song (Source).