Unit 01 - Treasure Hunt

1. Treasure Hunt
2. Modelled Questions
3. Sorting and Classifying


1. Treasure Hunt

This activity encourages students to formulate acute observations. The use of images of the excursion site provides a shared prior experience, a focus for observation and discussion, and a stimulus for students who are sometimes disinterested or difficult to engage in school activities. This includes, but is not limited to, students with disabilities as it helps to ‘set the scene’ for them before the excursion. The display of images, which students are able to revisit, makes the learning visible to parents.

Materials needed

• Digital or conventional camera
• Tripod (useful)
• Video camera (useful)
• Choose an excursion site

Before the excursion

Visit the site on your own. Take photographs or movies of plants, animals, fungi and rocks at the site. Try to capture different shaped features, the patterns of light and shade and contrasting colours. To prepare them for class use, develop or print the images and laminate them. Alternatively make the images into a slideshow to exhibit on your classroom computer.

Crop and enlarge some of the images so that only one detail is recognisable (leaves, roots, bark, trunks, flowers, a butterfly wing, the underside of a caterpillar or part of a tree trunk). Display the images around the classroom at eye level and/or keep the slide show available on the computer.

Examples of cropped images

Birdwing Caterpillar	Bombax	Leaf

Use the images to extend vocabulary and comprehension. One way to do this is to scribe the students’ ideas as they talk, supplying the ‘correct’ terminology so they start to build up a scientific vocabulary and a common language.

The display makes the learning visible to parents and students are able to revisit them frequently. This is a particularly useful strategy when working with students with disabilities as it helps to ‘set the scene’ for them before the excursion.

Class discussion

As a class, look at the images and talk about them. The purpose of producing a set of images from your pre-excursion visit is to introduce different features to students and encourage their own observations.

Discussion-starting questions:

• What do you think this is?
• What does it remind you of?
• What does it look like?
• Where do you think you might find this?
• Describe the colours/shapes you can see?
• Have you seen anything like this before?
• Do you think this is important to the rainforest?

Developing concepts of comparison:

• How is it the same?
• How is it different?
• Do you think it is from the same place?

Make a book

Make a book containing the images. Students can refer to the book before, during and after the excursion, for discussion, drawing and comparison. Making the book available to parents includes them in the classroom activities.

On the excursion

Take the book with you on the rainforest excursion. Show the images one at a time and ask the students to find this feature in the forest. When the students find the feature ask them to engage their senses by looking, touching, smelling and observing.

The following questions can be used to encourage students to engage their senses:

• Is this what you thought it would look like?
• How is it the same?
• How is it different?
• Have you seen this anywhere else?

2. Modelled Questions

Young students often find formulating questions difficult. They want to provide a statement or ask closed questions which require only one correct answer, such as: What is it? Where does it live? What colour is it?
Young students need explicit teaching and modelling of how to ask questions or how to pose problems. It is time well spent as it provides a basis for investigation, exploration and lifelong learning.

Conduct lessons on how to ask open-ended questions. Model the thinking process behind formulating a question and answering it. For example:

• I need to find out about...
• What sort of things can I ask?
• Who can I ask?
• Where can I look to find the answer?
• How can I check if it is right?
• What if I need to get more information?
• What if the information is different to what I had already heard?

Some question templates

• I wonder what would happen if…?
• Why do you think this is necessary to the rainforest?
• I wonder why/how…?
• What do you think about…?
• How do you think it can survive there?
• Why do you think this happens?
• What if...?
• We have a problem here I wonder what we can do to solve it?

Before the excursion

• What do you think you will see when we get there?
• What would you like to see?
• Do you think that we will see that?

Elicit questions from the students. This gives them an opportunity to make decisions about the direction of their learning as well as letting them see the variety of questions which can be generated depending on the purpose of the questioner.

On the excursion
Refer to the answers from the above questions (the focus and the student generated questions).

After the excursion
Repeat the above activity.

3. Sorting and Classifying

Students extend and practice their vocabulary by describing attributes of living and non-living things. Don’t be afraid to give the students the correct terminology for animals, plants and processes. Even very young students are able to remember, use and understand difficult vocabulary in context.
Providing students with appropriate vocabulary gives everybody a common language to use in discussions.

Before the excursion
Students collect leaves, bark, seeds, sticks, stones and dead insects from the school grounds and home. Ask students to find ways of describing and classifying their found objects. This encourages them to observe objects closely and to use appropriate language when describing them.

Model giving a description of objects. This helps students to learn and use appropriate vocabulary and terminology. Sort by attributes. For example, sort leaves by:

• shape
• colour
• types of veins
• serrated or non-serrated edges
• Are they compound or simple leaves?
• Do the leaves have drip tips? What purpose do they serve?
  

Describe seed shape, smell, size, colour and texture. Sort them according to:

• colour
• shape
• type
• size
• texture.
  

Create touch boxes for children to focus on texture of the found objects.
Model the vocabulary used to describe how something feels (slimy, sharp, smooth, furry and crinkly).

Classroom game
"What Am I?" The idea of the game is to guess the object with as few questions as possible. Model how to describe general and specific attributes and ask general and specific questions.
One student chooses an object from the rainforest such as:

A Buttress Root	A Vine	A Leech

The other students ask questions to determine its attributes.