Insects: Friend or Foe?

This year 2 unit of work is problem-based to address how insects affect our school community. The children are fascinated by the insects and spiders they observe while in the playground and collect them regularly. Some have been bitten by bull ants and others stung by paper wasps. This led us to believe that we have an insect issue in our school. Students considered what they could do to address issues with insects in our school. The unit was highly successful and went for the duration of a term. This school has many students from low socio-economic backgrounds and a high ESL population. The class comprised twenty students: thirteen boys and seven girls.

This unit of work was developed using the 'Learning by Design' template developed by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope and edited for Screen Education. The full text of this unit can be found at multiliteracies.com

Knowledge objectives

Experiencing

Building on learning interest and experience, this Learning Element will provide a framework for solving the problem of pest insects in our school and how they affect us.

As a result of completing this Learning Element, students will be more informed about:

* Insects that live in the school grounds

* Insects that live in the local area

* Finding insect information in books, photographs, on CDROMs, videos and the Internet

Conceptualizing

The students will:

* Be able to use the concepts of script, character, backdrop, set, colour, light, movement, sound effects, gestures

* Be able to distinguish different visual ways of setting out a report on a poster

* Be able to use different sources for notes: Internet, posters, brochures, books, CD-ROM, video, cassette, interview people

* Be able to use PowerPoint, font custom animation, colour, background, clip art, digital photos, captions, still images, size and design

* Be able to set out a report: headings, labelled diagrams, key words

Analysing

The students will:

* Identify how to solve our insect problem

* Identify the purpose of an information report

* Identify the target audience of our displays and expo

Applying

The students will:

* Plan how to solve our insect problem

* Write an information report

* Create a poster

* Use a digital camera

* Represent a life cycle

*...