Possible Learning Experiences
Students could be learning by:
• observing small animals or plants and reading books about their main features;
• exploring a beach and observing the different plants and animals that live there;
• identifying fruits and vegetables we buy as parts of flowering plants;
• writing about a visit to a farm where they observed a wide variety of living things;
• walking through the bush to observe the variety of plants and animals;
• making leaf rubbings and prints to observe closely the patterns of leaves;
• looking for small animals in the playground, e.g., snails, slaters, and spiders, in order to
observe their attributes;
• collecting and growing plants to investigate different kinds of plants and how they grow;
• keeping animals over a period of time, e.g., hatching chickens and recording growth rates
to observe the changes that occur;
• growing plants from seeds or bulbs to observe the changes which occur;
• discussing their experiences of keeping pets to show their awareness of the needs of a
domestic animal.
Assessment Examples
Teachers and students could assess the students’:
• skills of comparing and grouping, when the students sort and label appropriate pictures
and objects into sets of living and non-living things;
• knowledge and appropriate use of terms, when the students identify the major parts of a
plant or animal;
• descriptions of the common attributes of living things, when the students make a collage
picture of plants and animals with accompanying captions;
• understanding of patterns of change which occur over a period of time, when they record
their measurements of changes, such as height of a plant or opening of flowers;
• knowledge of the conditions needed to sustain life, when the students describe how to
care for pets and plants in their home and school environment;
• acceptance of responsibility for the care for a plant, when an individual student keeps a
plant in a pot alive for a period of time