Summary of lesson plans in unit:
In this mini-unit on Melbourne, students do 5 activities that will help them on our visit to Melbourne They will work individually and collaboratively to create a Melbourne brochure, learn how to make text to self connections while reading, collect data and organise it into a graph, identify signs of the past and learn helpful and hindering behaviours.
Task 1: Melbourne Brochure
As our Integrated Studies topic is Melbourne, children will be writing Information Reports about famous Melbourne landmarks and present their written in the style of a brochure.
Australian Curriculum Links:
Level 3 Writing:
- Understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of written texts.
- Understand how to use sound-letter relationships and knowledge of spelling rules, compound words, prefixes, suffixes, morphemes and less common letter combinations. eg. ‘tion’.
- Plan, draft & publish imaginative, informative & persuasive texts demonstrating increasing control over text structures & language features & selecting print, & multimodal elements appropriate to the audience & purpose.
- Use software including word processing programs with growing speed and efficiency to construct and edit texts featuring visual, print and audio elements.
Level 4 Writing:
- Incorporate new vocabulary from a range of sources into student’ own texts including vocabulary encountered in research.
Activity:
WALT: Plan, draft and edit an information report using correct structure and language features
- Explore the structure and language features of an Information Text through PM big books and Jenny Eather’s Writing Fun. Use highlighters and sticky notes to note key features.
- Use a blank planner to practise the use of paragraphs to separate each section and subtitles.
- Explain the writing process (research, plan, draft, edit, conference, publish).
- Children explore books, websites and video clips provided about Melbourne and start to decide on which aspects/landmarks they want to include in their report. Use sticky notes to note ideas.
- Use collected info to complete a plan for an information report that includes an opening statement, information and a conclusion.
- Use plan to then draft an information report using paragraphs SUPPORT: use Thrass charts and High Frequency Words charts whilst drafting.
- After completing draft, edit for grammar, spelling and punctuation.
- Conference with teacher.
- Publish using Microsoft Office Publisher with text positioned in the style of a brochure and insert photos to match the text.
Task 2: Text-to-Self Connections
Using youtube video clips of the story ‘Alexandra and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’, children make text to self connections.
Australian Curriculum Links:
Level 3 Reading:
- Draw connections between personal experiences and the worlds of texts, and share responses with others.
Activity:
WALT: Make connections between ourselves and the text.
- Discuss the concept of text to self connections.
- Children watch the youtube video clips of the story ‘Alexandra and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day’.
- As watching children record their connections in the graphic organiser provided.
- Compare connections.
Task 3: Getting to know you maths
Using children’s birthdays as a way to investigate tallies, graphs and calendars.
Australian Curriculum Links:
Level 3 Maths:
- Identify a question of interest based on 1 categorical variable
- Gather data relevant to the question
- Collect, check & classify data
- Create displays of data using lists, table & picture graphs & interpret them
- Name & order months & seasons
- Use a calendar to identify the date & determine the number of days in each month
Activity:
WALT: Collect data using a tally chart, present data using a picture graph, interpret data, order the months of the year and use a calendar to organise dates.
- Modelling completing a tally chart.
- Allow children to collect data about which month our birthdays are in.
- Asking children questions about the results; eg. which month has the most birthdays?
- Model how to take data from tally charts and present in a picture graph.
- Children complete their own picture graphs.
- In mixed ability pairs, children my order and complete a calendar, then input the birthdays of classmates on the correct dates.
- This makes a great classroom display of class birthdays.
Task 4: Signs of the Past
Australian Curriculum Links:
Level 3 History:
- What aspects of the past can you see today?
- Identify and compare features of objects from the past and present
Activity:
WALT: Look for signs of the past in our environment
- After organising appropriate consent forms and parent helps, go for a walk around the local neighbourhood surrounding the school.
- As you walk, ask children to look out for things they think are from the past.
- When something is spotted discuss how we know it is from the past.
- Eventually, some signs will become familiar.
- Start to encourage children to look out for moss, style, fading and cracks.
- When you return to the classroom, children can write or draw what they learnt about what to look for when looking for signs from the past.
Task 5: Helpful and Hindering Behaviour
Australian Curriculum Links:
Level 2 Civics and Citizenship:
- Begin to appreciate the common values important to groups and individuals; for example, fairness, tolerance, understanding and respect.
Level 3 Speaking and Listening:
- Understand that successful cooperation with others depends on shared use of social conventions, including turn-taking patterns, and forms of address that vary according to the degree of formality in social situations
Level 3 Civics and Citizenship:
- Contribute to the development and support of class rules and participate in school celebrations and commemorations of important events.
Activity:
WALT: Observe, take notes and understand that we need rules to help us learn and to keep us happy and safe.
- Divide children into random groups and assign them a group task (eg. completing a puzzle, creating an MAB tower, lining the dominoes up across the room, etc.) .
- without explaining to the children what you are looking for or giving them any behaviour guidelines, film each group working on their task.
- After, discuss the meaning of helpful behaviour and hindering behaviour.
- Play film back to students and allow them to note down any helpful behaviour and hindering behaviour they say (stress that we don’t want names mentioned, just the behaviours).
- Usually the list of hindering behaviours will be bigger, as a group, discuss rules and ways we can increase the use of helpful behaviours.
Assessment:
- Collect brochures, graphs and any other samples of work
- Use of success criteria
Resources:
- Helpful Behaviours
- Calendar
- Text to Self Connections
- MAB
- Grid paper
- Rulers
- Pencils
[wpfp-link]
If you like this lesson, or have an idea to improve it, please consider sharing it on Twitter and Facebook or leave a comment below.
