All living things have external features that help them survive in their habitats. Students will be familiar with their own external features, such as eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arms, legs and so on, but may not have considered how these features help them survive.
The focus of this lesson is to spark students’ interest, stimulate their curiosity, raise questions for inquiry and gain an understanding of their existing beliefs about the external features of a range of familiar animals. These existing ideas can then be taken account of in future lessons.
During the lesson students will have the opportunity to:
- demonstrate what they already know about the common features of animals such as head, legs and wings through play
- explore different ways of solving science questions through guided discussion
- sort information and classify objects based on easily observable characteristics.
Links to the Australian Curriculum
- Living things have a variety of external features (ACSSU017)
- Pose and respond to questions, and make predictions about familiar objects and events (ACSIS024)
- Use a range of methods to sort information, including drawings and provided tables through discussion, compare observations with predictions (ACSIS027)
- Compare observations with those of others (ACSIS213)
- Represent and communicate observations and ideas in a variety of ways (ACSIS029)
