INQUIRY LEARNING: Components

Unit Title/(Brainstorm):
Me, you, us and change
Year Level:
Prep, PE, German
No authentic PA integration
Big Idea:
This topic is important because Prep students will be becoming confident members of our
school community. They will understand various family structures, their personal identity and
develop a sense of belonging in the classroom, school and wider community.
Encourage and improve the students skills when observing the properties of objects, as well
as recording the change they are seeing.
Essential Questions:
-

What are rules and why are they needed? (PE)

What are the Tribe Agreements? (PE) (German) (Arts)
Who is in our school community? (German)
What makes a family? (German)
What makes a team?
What makes a good student? (German) (PE)
What makes you an individual? (German)
Why are objects made from different materials? (German) (PE)
How can we sort and group materials based on their observable properties?

Focus Skills: Thinking Focus:

-

Brainstorm
Label
Sort and classify
Communication
Working with others
Observe and record

Contributing Questions:
Ask students what they want to know about
- Family
- School
- Objects and materials
- Being themselves
- Getting along/ working together
Challenge:
-

Observe and record the properties and change of objects (PE)

Create your own family tree (German)

Establishing Prior Knowledge:

-

Week 2- Ask students

What do you know about families?
What do you know about our school?
What rules do you know?
Why do we have rules?
What makes objects look and feel different?

Add the students answers to establishing prior knowledge afterwards.

Guiding Statements: Aus VELS

Communication/
Personal
Learning

Design,
Creativity and
Technology

ICT

Thinking

Science
Chemical Science
- Material
properties
- Sorting and
observing
- Building
materials
- Clothing
forms

Text Focus:
- Recounts
Tuning In:
-

Start building a vocabulary list to be displayed and refered to throughout the unit.
Walk around the school to familiarise students with buildings, staff and school
grounds.
Learn playground and school routines.
WOW activity- create sensory bags where the students have to feel the objects and
describe what they see and feel. These words can be added to the vocab list.
Give students the essential question and ask for contributing questions. Display, add
to and refer to throughout the unit.
Tribes activities to get to know each other (refer to Tribes book)

Guiding Activities:
-

family tree mobiles for display

What makes a good student? Speech bubble display
Patchwork quilt/puzzle pieces- write their name, likes, family etc, and then piece

together as a whole level puzzle.

Comparing school to home Venn diagram
Bring in a family photo from home and discuss who is in your family.
Teacher portraits- students learn the staff members in the school and design a
portrait for the school corridor.
Different scenarios- read them out and children pick different responses to the
scenarios.
Create their own scenarios and act them out/ response to their scenario
Handprint contract- visual display that shows the students agreeing to the
Agreements.
Science with Sally incursion
3 little pigs- build the 3 house and design a 4 th house of their choice. Looking at the
materials used and which ones are better and why.
Make playdough
Use clay to make objects (looking at textures on the outside) and then let the clay dry
out once it is created.
Create an outfit out of different materials for a wooden/cardboard cut-out person.
5 senses, create experiences where the students have to use each of their senses.

*Investigations*
- Melting chocolate and them putting it into moulds
- Chopping up fruit and then blending them to make smoothies
- Ice, water, steam
- Oobleck
- Sensory tissue boxes/feel bags
-

Guiding Resources:

Solution: (Bringing it all together)

-

Each week, students are given a template to use during investigations, to describe
the change of different objects/properties in the environment. Students must
complete at least 1 a week. At the end of the term, compile all of their findings in their
own individual books that will demonstrate what they have learnt about change,
sorting, classifying and different properties of objects.

Evaluation:
-

linked to understandings and focus skills

including self, peer and teacher assessment
using a range of strategies including rubrics, anecdotal comments, collection of
samples, cheklists
Assessment for, as and of learning

Assessment for learning occurs when teachers use inferences (derived, deduced in
different ways) about student progress to inform their teaching. This includes pre-testing to
explore what is already known about a topic to be studied.
This is done during the course of the unit, before it is complete.
Pre-test completed with the students in Week 2.
Questions from students to inform us of what they want to know.

Assessment as learning occurs when students reflect on and monitor their progress to
inform their future learning goals. This is self and peer-assessment.
-

Adding to their personal Inquiry questions throughout the unit

Self assessment of their work

Assessment of learning occurs when teachers use evidence of student learning to make
judgments on student achievement against goals and standards. This is summative - done
at the end of the unit.
- Portfolio task at the end of the term
Reflection:

CYBER SAFETY

Cyberwise Monster family app for ipads

HTTP://WWW.LIFEEDUCATION.ORG.AU/BCYBERWISE-MONSTER-FAMILY

Constable Kenny Koala

HTTP://WWW.CONSTABLEKENNY.ORG.AU/6-8/

Hectors World- Set 1

HTTP://WWW.CYBERSMART.GOV.AU/SCHOOLS/TEACHER
%20RESOURCES/LOWER%20PRIMARY/HECTORS%20WORLD.ASPX

ENGLISH TERM PLANNER TERM 1 2016

-HWF = HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS
NB: Even though a letter is done per week, teachers use their
common sense and teacher judgement to take students out to
extend their learning during that time and during investigations.
WEEK

SPEAKING &
LISTENING

Ongoing Formal & Informal

activities/ Oral language
focus Presentation skills
1

READING

WRITING

SPELLING &
GRAMMAR

Send home note

with share time
day attached (put
in diary)

Difference between upper HFW- my, was

case and lower case
Activity: On my holiday
letters
I
Direction of print
School tour:

Activity: Write about what

or who they saw on the
school tour.

Sharing Time:
Share something
special to them

First day writing:

Today I.
Recognising letters of the HFW- to, and, the
alphabet
Activity: Make a
Valentines Day card.

Differences between
letters and words.

Activity: Use magazines to cut

out letters and words to
discriminate between the two
and to show how letters make
words and words make
sentences.
Features of text- Front Cover,
Back Cover, direction of text
(Parsely Rabbits Book about
Books)

4
Start
Reading
Groups
5

Activity: Make a book about

themselves
Read familiar texts
Practicing phonic
knowledge
Letters, Words and Sentences

Sharing Time:
Share something
that begins with Portfolio task: Student pick their
the letter T or S own word and find the letters,

HFW am, a, at
Activity: I am at school.
Students draw pictures
of what they like about
write and draw the words and put
school and write a
the word into a sentence.
sentence to match.
Big Books
Sharing Time:
HFW- I, can ,like, have,
Capital
Letters
Share something
am, my
beginning with
Punctuation- Capital
the letter M
Letters and Full Stops
Activity: Self portrait- My
name is, I am, I can, I
have, I like

Big Books
Portfolio Task
Share a photo of Full stops
their family.
Explain who is in
their family and
anything they
want to the
audience to know
about their family.

HFW
This is my family
Names used for
different family
members

Activity: Each student will

draw and label their family

Sequencing events from a story

Sharing Time:
Share something
beginning with
the letter C

Sharing time:
Sequencing events from a
Something you story
have learnt this
term

HFW- in, is, it

PORTFOLIO TASK:
Activity: Who is special
to me and why.

HFW- of, be, that

SPEAKING & LISTENING

Formal & Informal
Oral language
Presentation skills

Over the term students practise their oral language skills during daily Community Circles, Share
time, Presentations and general conversation.
They practise the skills of:
-Turn taking
-Using their manners
- Volume
- Voice Projection
- Eye contact
- Attentive Listening
- Mutual Respect
- Appreciations
- Asking appropraite questions
- Listening for responses
- Expressing opinions, likes and dislikes
- Sharing feelings and thoughts.
These are skills that are covered daily rather than focused on for one specific week.

Lesson Structure for Reading Groups:

10 minute introduction/focus/story
15-20minutes Independent reading.
While students are reading, teachers will conference one-on-one with
students. Helping set goals with them (CAF)

30minutes of lesson/groups

Students to have the following in their Book Box:

Guided reading books
2 just right books (picked using the 5 finger rule
2 picture books
Reading work book

MATHEMATICS TERM PLANNER

-

USE YMER FOLDER/ MICRO PLANNING

-

WEEK

NUMBER & ALGEBRA

ON THE SERVER

GEORGE BOOKER

MEASUREMENT AND
GEOMETRY

STATISTICS AND
PROBABILITY

Numbers 1-5, making models of numbers, recognising and writing them

Numbers 1-10
Making models, recogising and writing them

SSort, describe and name familiar two dimensional shapes (squares, circles, triangles
and rectangles)

Portfolio Task:.
Students are given familiar 2D shapes to use to make a picture. They have to use a circle, square,
triangle and rectangle as a mimimum. They then trace around the picture onto an A3 piece of
paper. They will need to colour code the pictures to demonstrate their understanding of being able
to sort shapes.

Sort, describe and name familiar 3D shapes such as cubes and spheres

Days of the week

Understanding the weekly timetable (Specialists, assembly and library)

Describe familiar time sequences of events (before and after lunch, build in daily routines)

Count, compare and order collections and objects up to 10 and beyond.

Activity: Use the book The Nickle Nackle Tree students design a tree and place numbers on
it.
7

Connect number names, numeralsand quantities including zero. (0-5)

Patterns. Recognising and making patterns with two or more elements

Assessment:
- Wednesday literacy and numeracy assessment
- Anecdotal observations
- Running records
- Personalised goals for students during Investigations.
- Portfolio tasks
PORTFOLIO TASKS

Reading: Students pick their own word, find the letters in a magazine and cut
them out, write the word and then put their word into a sentence. They also
draw a supporting picture for that word.
Inquiry: Booklet of observations and recordings from different chemical
science activities during Investigations.
Speaking and listening: Video each student presenting their family photo for
Share time.
Writing: Photocopy a page from their diary writing as a real work sample.
Maths: Create a 2D picture using shapes and sort the shapes using colours
(Task 1).
o Write the numbers 1-10 and draw a collection of objects to go with the
numbers (Task 2)