Stage 2 Pre-visit activities
Ideas for pre-visit activities emphasis on: Planet Earth, Living Things and Their Relationships.
The suggested activities reflect these topic areas.
As students will be looking at life cycles and biodiversity, the optimal time for the students to visit site would be in early September/October. At this time there will be tadpoles in the wetlands, many different kinds of wattle seed pods and the impact of cold weather on the garden will still be observable.
Key Concepts/Language:
There are a number of key concepts that will need to be explored before visiting the ErinEarth site. These include:
| biodiversity | interdependence | habitat |
| food chains/webs | human impact | life cycles |
| ecosystems | sustainability | adaptation |
These are complex ideas that need to be thoroughly explored so that students have a clear understanding of their meaning and can use the terms with confidence.
There is also a language that needs to be developed to support these understanding of the concepts (hyperlink to ‘Glossary’).
Interest Raiser:
Show video ‘Ollie Saves the Planet’ to introduce the topic of this Stage and to raise children’s interest. Discussion about the video will provide an opportunity for you to determine students’ prior knowledge, their questions and where you need to start programming. This might be done through the development of a chart as follows at either the individual level or class level:
| What we Know | What I still want to know | How do I find this out. |
As a result of this chart students can develop questions for investigation. Context has already been identified by the student/s.
For example: Pose a general question ‘What things might affect __________________ (dependent variable)?’
‘What happens to __________ when we change the __________?’
Questions like these will provide starting points for on-site activities.
Other Activities:
- Create a timeline that shows, in sequence, events that demonstrate changes to the earth.
- Start ‘word wall’ as a means of developing both a class dictionary and a Glossary. It will be important to help students find language to describe concepts in their on words.
- Introduce students to the ErinEarth site through the exploration of the Site map and the web site (Here you will find a background history). They can identify and label different areas and predict what they might contain.
- Introduce the idea of our impact on the Planet and the meaning of ‘Walking lightly on the earth’. Start a class chart on cause/effect and problem /solution that will record over time students’ identification of issues, their effects, the problem and how we might go about rectifying these.
For example:
| Cause | Effect | Problem | Possible Solution |
| Drought | Dying vegetation |
Erosion Loss of vegetation |
Change of farming methods Change approaches to irrigation Use of drought tolerant native plants in our gardens |
After the students visit the site, and as their knowledge develops they can add items to the chart.
Explore the website to find out the history of the Presentation Sisters and the development of ErinEarth.
Back to For Teachers, Stage 2 Programme