Year+3+and+4+Planning

Fertile Question: What is Survival?** **Unit title: Survival in our Backyard ** All living things need to be able to adapt in order to survive __KEY UNDERSTANDINGS__
 * Overarching Concept: Survival
 * __Big Understanding:__**

**//What are the main understandings we will investigate to help children understand the big idea//**
 * Living things have adapted over time to survive
 * Human beings have an impact on other living things
 * All living things depend on one another for survival

**Teacher Questions** What living creatures are living in our backyard? Why are they living in that environment? How do they survive there? What special features do they have to survive there? How have they adapted to survive in that environment? How are humans impacting on their environment? Are there any predators? What is the food chain?

**__Student Interests__** //What arises in class//

** Exhibition of Learning //Creature museums in classrooms demonstrating an understanding of a range of ways that minibeasts adapt in order to be able to survive in a range of environments // **

__Resources__ __ASSESSMENT Diagnostic__ Brainstorm What ways animals survive… What we want to learn… What do we already know? __Formative__ //How will we assess student’s progress in understanding the “Big Idea”?// Conferencing Anecdotal observations __Summative__ //How will we assess student’s understanding of the “Big Idea” at the end of the unit?//
 * //What resources will we use to help children gain a through understanding of the “Big Idea?// **
 * //How will we assess what the children already know about the “big idea”?//

// KEY COMPETENCIES // ** //Which key competencies will be addressed through this unit?// // 1 Thinking: Thinking creatively and using cognitive or meta-cognitive strategies. (This competency should be ingoing) // 2. Relating to others: Being co-operative, changing roles in groups, dealing with conflict, showing responsibility. 3. Managing Self: Goal setting, showing Perseverance 4. Participating and Contributing: In a range of community and cultural settings 5. Using Languages, symbols and texts: Working with and making meaning of the codes in which knowledge is expressed

//What thinkers’ keys and tools will be taught to give students the necessary skills to carry out investigations?// // **SCAMPER** // //SCUMPS//
 * __THINKING SKILLS__**


 * Learning Activities**


 * 1. Learning intention:**

Children will draw conclusions about how camouflage aids survival. (explaining how size, shape, colour may help an insect survive)

The word camouflage comes from the French word “//camourfler//” meaning “to disguise”.


 * Learning experience:**

Read stories about how various different insects disguise themselves.

Study how some insects might look the same as bark, some look like leaves etc.

Go outside and record and observe various colours in nature. Make Moths that are those natural colours. Have half the class go outside and hide their moths, then have the remaining half of the class search for these moths.

Discuss why some moths were easier than others to find. Discuss why insects might use camouflage.


 * 2. Learning intention:**

Children will observe and record various features of an insect. Children will predict why certain features are present on their collected insects.


 * Learning Experience:**

Go on a bug hunt around the school or colour copy various photos of insects.

Have children closely observe and draw and label various features of an insect. Make predictions about why these features are present.


 * 3. Learning Intention:**

Children will understand how lacking just one element of a habitat (food, water, shelter, and space) can affect an organism's chance for survival.

Begin with asking students what would happen to them if they did not have enough water to drink? What would happen if they did not have a space in which to live? Would these factors make life easy or hard? What would you have to do to survive in these conditions? The students will then learn that a habitat consists of factors such as food, water, space, and shelter. Did any of the children not meet the needs for survival? If the students were real insects and they did not meet their needs, what would happen? How is habitat important? What is happening to insects that are living in a forest that is being torn down? Do they die from loss of habitat, or do they survive and adapt to their changing environment?
 * Learning Experience:**
 * The students will then be invited to partake in a habitat game in which they are to imagine themselves as an insect.
 * In order to survive, the insect must collect food, find water, find a place to stay for shelter, and an insect must find a place to live where there is space.
 * The class will simulate the collection process by having strips of various colors of paper, (with each color representing an element of habitat) distributed around the room.
 * The color strips will be coded as follows
 * Red = shelter
 * Green = food
 * Blue = water
 * Brown = space
 * In order to survive the activity, each student must collect 1 red paper, 3 green slips of paper, 2 blue strips of paper, and 1 brown strip of paper within 30 seconds of the instructor telling the students to go on their survival trek.
 * At different intervals, the teacher can simulate different conditions such as season, weather, and climate changes.
 * As students collect the colored strips, the teacher will remind them that those insects who do not collect the needed amount of food, shelter, water, and space: can become sick and/or die.
 * This activity can take as long as the teacher feels necessary and as long as the children are interested and learning.
 * Closure:** This activity will close with having the children think about different types of insects. Do different insects have different needs? Are some insect's needs harder to meet than other insect's needs? Through this activity the students have learned the importance of habitat, and how if one element of habitat were missing, an organism would need to adapt in order to survive.

Check out this site for more ideas – **//Insectcolpedia//** http://www.pedagonet.com/other/lsplns.html Learning Experiences for insect survival unit