MAKING SENSE OF THE LIVING WORLD: LEVEL 1

ACHIEVEMENT OBJECTIVES

Students can

share their experiences relating to the living world, and group the living world according to some of its attributes, e.g., living, non-living; plant, animal; mammal, non-mammal; backbone, no backbone;
observe and identify parts of common animals and plants, e.g., major parts of the human body, paw, snout, tail, fin, wing, leaf, seed, flower, stem;
investigate and describe the changes in a particular plant or animal over a period of time, e.g., growth of an animal, diurnal and seasonal opening of flowers, germination of seeds;
accept responsibility for the needs of a house plant and an animal.

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.

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.