Year One ‘School Yard Safari’

During Term Two, we have been combining the learning areas of English, Media Arts, Technology and Visual Arts with Science to learn about minibeasts in their environments.

In the Science unit, ‘Schoolyard Safari’, we observed small animals in the schoolyard and then created a poster in Media Arts about caring for small animals in their environment or habitat. We have also discussed what small animals can be found in our wider environment such as our backyards or parks we like to visit. We have developed a greater understanding of three small animals, in particular, ants, worms and snails. At the end of the unit, we showed what we had learnt by writing an information report about how these small animals move, eat, live and protect themselves.

In English, we have been studying fiction and non-fiction texts about small animals to find out many more interesting facts about them. Our focus has been on spiders, ladybugs, snails, geckos and chameleons. We have created ‘KWL Charts’ about each minibeast and made a list under the headings of ‘What we already know’, ‘What we want to know’ and ‘What we have learned’.  For example, we already knew that spiders have eight legs, but some of us wanted to know, ‘How many eyes spiders have?’, ‘What spiders eat?’ and ‘Do spiders have a birthday?’. At the end of the term, we will be studying elephants so we can make a comparison using a Venn Diagram of the similarities and differences between small and large animals.

In Technology this term, we have been learning how to create a three-dimensional model of a snail using an egg carton. We added details such as the snails ‘coiled shell’ and ‘feelers’ using various materials. We created a snail habitat to show what we know about the needs of a snail. We then used an iPad to photograph our design and write a reflection about the design process.

This week in Visual Arts, we will be creating a water-coloured painting of a chameleon using shades of light and dark and investigating through the reading of non-fiction texts whether chameleons really change colour!