Unit of Work
Topic: Hermit Crabs
Learning Focus
Build on current knowledge of hermit crabs.
Further develop a range of literacy skills e.g. sequencing, inferring meaning, identifying main ideas, comprehension, prediction.
Further develop ICT skills to research and present information.
Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS)
- Order information and sequence events using some detail or illustrative evidence, as well as express a point of view providing some information and supporting detail.
- Interpret the main ideas and purpose of texts.
- Listen attentively to spoken texts and identify the topic, retell information accurately, ask clarifying questions, volunteer information and justify opinions.
- Infer meaning from material presented in informative texts.
- They use several strategies to locate, select and record key information from texts.
- Identify how language is used to represent information.
- Students cooperate with others in teams for agreed purposes, taking roles and following guidelines established within the task.
- Use a recommended search engine and limited key words to locate information from websites.
- Students access websites to acquire from, or share information with, peers and known and unknown experts.
- Students identify strategies they use to organise their ideas, and use appropriate language to explain their thinking.
- Students identify and provide reasons for their point of view, and justify changes in their thinking.
Engage
Care for two hermit crabs in the classroom
Brainstorn to ascertain prior knowledge- complete a written task (FOR assessment)
Read a big book called ‘Hermit Crabs’ by Lola Schaefer and a picture book called ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson
Explore
Whole Class Activity
Observe the behaviour and characteristics of the hermit crabs.
Group Activity
Each group is to write down their observations. Share with the whole class.
Partner Task
Explore a range of websites about hermit crabs. Using the information from the group task and the websites, create a poster demonstrating their knowledge of hermit crabs. (AS assessment)
Explain
Whole Class Activity
Create a whole class Powerpoint Presentation showing facts about hermit crabs. Each student is to create a slide with them holding a hermit crab and a speech bubble with a fact written inside.
Individual Tasks
- Comprehension
- Cloze Activity
- Label and write facts about hermit crabs (AS Assessment)
Elaborate
Individual Task
- Continue to research information on the Internet.
- Complete a mini-project. Encourage students to include new information about hermit crabs- something they have not yet learnt.
- Present project to the whole class.
Evaluate
True or False Activity (OF assessment)