In the backyard, Little J finds a Hawk Moth caterpillar on the Tar vine that he names ‘Sausage’. He wants to take Sausage to school but the caterpillar has other ideas and disappears underground. Nanna teaches Little J the story about the Yeperenye caterpillar of the Arrernte people from central Australia. Sausage finally returns to give Little J a further lesson on life cycles. Sissy wants to perform a dance for the school with Big Cuz, but Big Cuz feels ‘shame’.

Evaluate - Engage in discussions about observations and represent ideas

Theme - THE SUN, DAYS & NIGHTS

Evaluate what students have learnt (know and can do) from the activities in relation to the Science curriculum.

Assess the success of the module through reflecting on students:

• posing and responding to questions how the Sun appears to move as the Earth turns
• comparing and discussing the ways Aboriginal peoples and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples, and Western cultures, understand the Sun, Moon and stars
• discussing how astronomy is related to culture through the names of constellations and the stories we tell about them
• recording observations (data) about time and the seasons through recognising the Sun and daylight hours.

As a culmination of the learning experience in this module, have students:

• Create a simplified map of the school (with North at the top) and ask students to name landmarks in the area, near and far (such as the coastline, a mountain, a local creek or their homes).
• Construct a map for display in the classroom where students can add to the location of constellations they find, e.g. Southern Cross (Crux), Pegasus the flying horse, or Orion the archer.
• Tell their own story or recount a story about stars and constellations, e.g. the Southern Cross (Crux), Pegasus the flying horse, or Orion the archer, and illustrate it for a class story book.
• Record the Moon every night as it waxes to full strength, then wanes to a sliver over a month.
• Recount Aboriginal Dreaming stories and/or Torres Strait Islander Bipo Bipo Taim (Before Before Time) stories about the Sun and the Moon, and have students illustrate these stories to add to the class collective anthology of stories.

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, a self-evaluation could be constructed as a poll rating their responses using:

• Kahoot
• Quizlet

Use Early Years writing using rubrics to provide feedback to students.

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

• Learning Worm 

Teacher reflection tools

Reflect on your teaching of the module. What worked well? What needs more work? What would you add/change/omit in future?

Ask students to rate your efforts and recommend areas for improvement. You may wish to refer to broader resources for reflection or for gaining feedback, for example:

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