Inquiry
Unit Planner
Life Cycles- Orchard Grove Level 1 & 2 AusVELS •Living things grow, change and have offspring similar to themselves (ACSSU030) •Participate in different types of guided investigations to explore and answer questions, such as manipulating materials, testing ideas, and accessing information sources (ACSIS038) •Through discussion, compare observations with predictions (ACSIS214) Description Investigating the various growths and changes from birth for various species and recognizing that each species have different stages of development. Exploring the different characteristics of life stages. Going through the sequence by implementing the five stages of inquiry questioning and predicting, planning and conducting, processing and analyzing data and information, evaluating and communicating. This sequence ran over 4-5 sessions. Teaching Strategies •Interrelated learning focus with literacy •Explicit teaching- Learning Intention •Collaborative group work •Independent work •ICT •Graphic Organisers Assessment •Teacher observations and corrections •Work Samples •Self reflections •Final Powerpoint presentations •ICT skills checklist •Comprehension activities |
Collecting student work samples allowed me see how the students were progressing throughout the learning sequence and determine who needed a bit more support. The comprehension activity showed that the two students whose work I looked at were able to successfully answer the questions well but it was clear that the student on the left was working at a higher level due to the use of full sentences and the student on the right made more spelling errors when they had the information in front of them. In the Venn Diagrams it can be seen that the student on the left was working at a lower level then the student on the right as they were unable to categorise as many of the animals that were listed on the board and needed more support throughout the activity.
POLT 3.1 uses strategies that are flexible and responsive to the values, needs and interests of individual students. “Lessons were discussed and resources such as kidcyber, enabled her to source content for her Inquiry unit which also included IT sessions”- Kathy Costaras, Orchard Grove Primary School |