Little J shares his bird feather collection with B-Boy. In school, Little J promises to find bush tucker to share with the class. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to find bush tucker. He enrols the help of Big Cuz and Nanna to teach him ‘proper way’ to identify and track animals. The group finds emu eggs but overnight a greedy goanna eats them. Nanna comes to the rescue by making spaghetti bolognaise for the class.

Evaluate - Compare observations with those of others

Theme - LIVING THINGS

Evaluate what students have learnt (what they know and can do) from using Little J & Big Cuz, Episode 5 activities as a stimulus for learning in relation to the Science curriculum outcomes.

Assess the success of the module through reflecting on:

• plants and animals have a variety of external features that can identify them and how they can be grouped and classified
• the meaning/definition of native species and introduced/alien species, and what animals belong to which category
• the strategies and measures taken by environmental agencies to protect native species, and who acts to take care of the environment
• how, why and when did introduced species, plants and animals, come to Australia.

As a culmination of their learning in this module, students could

• write emails/letters to the local council, or to the school council, asking about actions and strategies to control introduced or non-native species in the local area or region
• design and create persuasive posters/collages for the protection of native Australian plants and animals. Students should highlight the plight of endangered species. Display these within the school
• create a short documentary film, in the manner of Richard Attenborough, about invasive and destructive species of plants or animals in Australia
• create a finger puppet show using Australian animals as the main characters.

Student evaluation tools

Students could self-evaluate their learning using a ‘monitoring’ journal (physical or digital) where the teacher lists the key understandings and concepts students needed to acquire through the module.

• Where applicable, construct a self-evaluation as a poll, rating the students’ responses using.
  • Kahoot
  • Quizlet
• Use Early Years writing using rubrics to provide feedback to students. Explain this evaluation to parents during your parent/teacher interviews.

Students can use a learning worm to evaluate their work, adapted from link below:

• Learning Worm 

Teacher reflection tools

Reflect on your teaching of the module. What worked well? What needs more work? What would you add, change or omit in future? Ask students to rate your efforts and recommend areas for improvement. You may want to refer to broader resources for reflection or for gaining feedback, for example:

• Demonstrating impact 
• ‘How-to’ guide: Learning walks 
• Reflection on Practice Tool