Introduction

This unit includes activities and possible assessment tasks linked to The Arts: Drama, Australian Curriculum 9.0 across Foundation to Year 2. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing drama units or complete the entire unit of work with their students. Many of the activities include extensions or modifications.

The learning activities will encourage students to explore Moss Piglet as a live performance, with the possibility of creating and performing. They will help to generate whole class discussions and the sharing of different interpretations of the play and the characters, as well as provide opportunities for students to work independently in small groups to create moments of performance.

Learning intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Learn about storytelling through theatre.

• Work together in small groups to create performance moments.

• Reflect on techniques they have seen and to use those reflections to inform how they might communicate their ideas.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Use imagination and creativity in response to the themes and techniques being explored.

• Work collaboratively.

• Identify elements of drama in the work of others and use them to communicate ideas.

Achievement Standard

Foundation
By the end of the Foundation year, students describe experiences, observations, ideas and/or feelings about arts works they encounter at school, home and/or in the community. Students use play, imagination, arts knowledge, processes and/or skills to create and share arts works in different forms.

Years 1 and 2
By the end of Year 2, students identify where they experience drama. They describe where, why and/or how people across cultures, communities and/or other contexts experience drama. Students pretend and imagine as they create roles and situations in improvised drama and/or dramatic play. They perform their drama in informal settings.

Going to the Theatre

What you’ll need: N/A

Activity: Guide a conversation using the following questions:

• What is a play? What is the theatre? What is live performance? Encourage examples.
• Who here has seen a live performance? Discuss these – possibilities include (music concert, school based performance, street theatre, a play with puppets or another type of performance in a theatre). What did it make you think, feel or learn?
• Why do people make and perform theatre?
• Why do audiences go to theatre?

Explain that the class will be going to see a show called Moss Piglet.

• What do you think will happen there?

Ask four students to stand, step into the circle and announce their names loudly and proudly! Add an adjective with the same starting letter e.g. ‘Funny Francis’. Repeat until everyone has had a turn. After the last person has announced, everyone must clap them as though it is the end of a show.

Modification/Extension:

• In the above exercise students could also announce their names with an emotion attached, such as sadness or fear.
• Students could draw an image from a stage show they have seen or imagined. How many elements can they include?

Content Description:

Foundation: AC9ADRFE01 Year 1 & 2: AC9ADR2E01

Connected Learning Areas: Health & Physical Education (Personal, social and community health – interacting with others)

• Literacy
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding

Action in the Landscape!

What you’ll need: Computers and/or butchers paper to brainstorm.

Activity: In the performance, Moss Piglet visited lots of extreme environments that we sometimes see in action films or read about in action books. “Action” is a genre of storytelling and often includes far away or dangerous locations and physical struggle. Moss Piglet survives these locations because of their superpower of being able to ‘tun’.

Action stories also have a story that moves forward quickly with new ideas popping up to keep things exciting. In drama, when a story needs to move forward, we call it ‘advancing’. Tell the students that they are going to create a short performance, set in an extreme location, focusing on the technique of advancing the story.

• Create a big list of extreme environments and locations. The list could include ones from the play and imagined places.
• In groups of four, students can choose a location as the setting for their performance and come up with how the story starts, three different problems that can occur in the location (this could be coming across a scary creature, falling into a crevasse, pool or fire, losing all of your food or water etc.) and how it might resolve.
• They can then improvise their performance to find what works best. If they find themselves getting stuck they can ask themselves ‘and then what happens?’.
• Once they have found some solid ideas, they can rehearse until ready to show the class.

Content Description:

Foundation: AC9ADRFC01 Year 1 & 2: AC9ADR2C01

Connected Learning Areas: HASS, English (Literature – Examining Literature).

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking

Introduction

This unit includes activities and possible assessment tasks linked to English, Australian Curriculum 9.0 across Foundation to Year 2. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing English units or complete the entire unit of work with their students.

The learning activities can provide a structure to explore Moss Piglet as a performance text and the incredible facts that inspired it. They will provide opportunity for students to interpret the text, analyse plot and character and create their own responses using language features with purpose in mind.

Learning intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Experience a theatrical production as a text to be watched, heard, analysed and responded to.
• Create their own work by using characters, action, settings from the work as prompts.
• To work individually and as groups to use plot structures to clearly tell a story.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Use the themes of a theatrical production to create their own response.
• Identify and use different narrative structures and techniques to tell a story.
• Create responses using various language features and meaning inspired by the production.

Achievement Standard

Foundation Year
By the end of Foundation, students listen to texts, interact with others and create short spoken texts, including retelling stories. They share thoughts and preferences, retell events and report information or key ideas to an audience. They use language features including words and phrases from learning and texts. They listen for and identify rhymes, letter patterns and sounds (phonemes) in words. They orally blend and segment phonemes in single-syllable words.

They read, view and comprehend texts, making connections between characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences. They identify the language features of texts including connections between print and images. They name the letters of the English alphabet and know and use the most common sounds (phonemes) represented by these letters (graphs). They read words including consonant–vowel–consonant words and some high-frequency words.

They create short written texts, including retelling stories using words and images where appropriate. They retell, report information and state their thoughts, feelings and key ideas. They use words and phrases from learning and texts. They form letters, spell most consonant–vowel–consonant words and experiment with capital letters and full stops.

Year 1
By the end of Year 1, students interact with others, and listen to and create short spoken texts including recounts of stories. They share ideas and retell or adapt familiar stories, recount or report on events or experiences, and express opinions using a small number of details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They sequence ideas and use language features including topic-specific vocabulary and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts, monitoring meaning and making connections between the depiction of characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences. They identify the text structures of familiar narrative and informative texts, and their language features and visual features. They blend short vowels, common long vowels, consonants and digraphs to read one-syllable words. They read one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns, and an increasing number of high-frequency words. They use sentence boundary punctuation to read with developing phrasing and fluency.

They create short written and/or multimodal texts including recounts of stories with events and characters. They report information and experiences, and express opinions. Ideas in their texts may be informative or imaginative and include a small number of details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They write simple sentences with sentence boundary punctuation and capital letters for proper nouns. They use topic-specific vocabulary. They write words using unjoined upper-case and lower-case letters. They spell most one- and two-syllable words with common letter patterns and common grammatical morphemes, and an increasing number of high-frequency words.

Year 2
By the end of Year 2, students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken texts including stories. They share ideas, topic knowledge and appreciation of texts when they recount, inform or express an opinion, including details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They organise and link ideas, and use language features including topic-specific vocabulary and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts, identifying literal and inferred meaning, and how ideas are presented through characters and events. They describe how similar topics and information are presented through the structure of narrative and informative texts, and identify their language features and visual features. They use phonic and morphemic knowledge, and grammatical patterns to read unfamiliar words and most high-frequency words. They use punctuation for phrasing and fluency.

They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories to inform, express an opinion, adapt an idea or narrate for audiences. They use text structures to organise and link ideas for a purpose. They punctuate simple and compound sentences. They use topic-specific vocabulary. They write words using consistently legible unjoined letters. They spell words with regular spelling patterns, and use phonic and morphemic knowledge to attempt to spell words with less common patterns.

The Tardigrade’s units of meaning!

What you’ll need: Art and craft materials, images and video footage of a Tardigrade.

Activity: Show the class some images of animals with interesting names such as spider crab, Tasmanian devil, silver fish, jellyfish, millipede and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

See if they can name them and write them on the board. Have a conversation using questions like:

• Is a silver fish a fish? Is a jellyfish a fish? Is a Tasmanian Devil a devil? Is the spider crab a spider?
• Why do these animals have those names? Is it because of how they look, how they move, or the sound they make?

Explain that lots of animals have extra information in their names so that we know more about them. For example, we can identify a spider crab is a crab that LOOKS LIKE a spider! Break the names down on the board to explain this idea.

• What does Tyrannosaurus Rex mean?
• What does millipede mean?

Explain that some animals have names that come from old languages like Latin and Ancient Greek. Break down Tyrannosaurus Rex on the board as – Tyranno (Tyrant) suarus (lizard) and Rex (King). Do this with Millipede as well. There is so much information in these names!

Write up the names Tardigrade (Slow Stepper), Moss Piglet and Water Bear.

Ask the students to imagine what these animals might look like.

Can they draw/paint/model/collage their ideas?

When they have explored their own ideas, show them a real tardigrade (video/images) and explain that Moss Piglet and Water Bears are like a nick name. What is the information we know about this animal just from its three names? A lot!

Modification/Extension:

• Students could invent an animal using units of meaning and write about them.

Content Description:

Foundation: AC9EFLY15 Year 1: AC9E1LY05 Year 2: AC9E2LY05

Connected Learning Areas: Science (Science as a Human Endeavour – Use and Influence of Science).

• Literacy

A little heroes journey!

What you’ll need: Paper, pencils.

Activity: Use the following questions to prompt a discussion about heroes, ensuring that they identify the resilience of these characters:

• What is a hero? Think about a range of examples (include female, child and animal heroes).
• With a partner, think about your favourite hero. What are some of the problems they encountered and how did they overcome them?

Remind the children about Moss Piglet. Is Moss Piglet a hero? Is Moss Piglet resilient? Discuss all the obstacles that Moss Piglet encountered and how they overcame them.

Most stories about heroes follow a pattern. Guide the children through a simple version of the heroes Journey, eg:

1. The character leaves home.
2. They encounter a problem or a test and overcome it (this may happen more than once, and the problems may get harder.
3. They return home changed for the better.

Children can now invent a story (individually, in a small group or as a class) about a hero going on their journey. Is it a re-telling of Moss Piglet? This story could be told through play, drawing, a comic or even a song.

Extensions/Modifications

• You could spend more time on this and include a deeper dive into inventing a character.

Content Description:

Foundation: AC9EFLE03, AC9EFLE05 Year 1: AC9E1LE03, AC9E1LE05 Year 2: AC9E2LE03, AC9E2LE05

Connected Learning Areas: Drama (Creating and Making).

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking

This unit includes activities and possible assessments in the areas of Science Inquiry and Understanding, linked to Science, Australian Curriculum across Foundation to Year 2. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing Science units or complete the entire unit of work with their students.

The learning activities can provide a structure to explore physical and biological sciences inspired by Moss Piglet’s world. There are opportunities here for whole class discussions, group work and independent research. Some of the tasks for younger students can be adapted for older students and vice versa.

Learning intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Consider how the themes of a theatrical production link to the science learning area.
• To question and predict answers to questions and outcomes based raised by the performance.
• To wonder, imagine and fact find ideas explored in the production.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Combine creativity and scientific thinking to come up with responses to questions and tasks.
• Plan and conduct an experiment inspired by the production.
• Communicate their scientific findings and ideas effectively.

Achievement Standard

Foundation Year
By the end of Foundation students group plants and animals based on external features. They identify factors that influence the movement of objects. They describe the observable properties of the materials that make up objects. They identify examples of people using observation and questioning to learn about the natural world.

Students pose questions and make predictions based on their experiences. They engage in investigations and make observations safely. With guidance, they represent observations and identify patterns. With guidance, they compare their observations with their predictions. They share questions, predictions, observations and ideas about their experiences with others.

Year 1
By the end of Year 1 students identify how living things meet their needs in the places they live. They identify daily and seasonal changes and describe ways these changes affect their everyday life. They describe how different pushes and pulls change the motion and shape of objects. They describe situations where they use science in their daily lives and identify examples of people making scientific predictions.

Students pose questions to explore observations and make predictions based on experiences. They follow safe procedures to make and record observations. They use provided tables and organisers to sort and order data and information and, with guidance, represent patterns. With guidance, they compare observations with predictions and identify further questions. They use everyday vocabulary to communicate observations, findings and ideas.

Year 2
By the end of Year 2 students identify celestial objects and describe patterns they observe in the sky. They demonstrate how different sounds can be produced and describe the effect of sound energy on objects. They identify ways to change materials without changing their material composition. They describe how people use science in their daily lives and how people use patterns to make scientific predictions.

Students pose questions to explore observed patterns or relationships and make predictions based on experience. They suggest steps to be followed in an investigation and follow safe procedures to make and record observations. They use provided tables and organisers to sort and order data and represent patterns in data. With guidance, they compare their observations with those of others, identify whether their investigation was fair and identify further questions. They use everyday and scientific vocabulary to communicate observations, findings and ideas.

Zoomed in World!

What you’ll need: Pre-prepared tiny sticky dots (as small as possible!), paper, pencils, water dropper, a selection of books about size comparisons such as The Book of Comparisons by Clive Gifford or The Book of Comparisons by The Diagram Group, keep this video about tardigrades handy.

Activity: Spend some time looking at books and images that compare different sized animals and objects.

As a class or in small groups, students can make a list of the smallest animals on the planet. Now make a list of the biggest animals on the planet. Where do humans fit?

Use the list and the following questions to discuss ideas of size and scale:

• What are some good things that come from being small?
• What are some good things that come from being large?
• Can small animals be strong? Can large animals be weak?
• What is the smallest, strongest animal you can think of?

Show the class an image of a tardigrade. Allow the class to talk about its appearance, what they think it might be or do, what they think it might be called! Tell them that it is called a Tardigrade which means ‘slow stepper’ because they step slowly using their eight legs! Also tell them that they have two nicknames – ‘Water Bear’ and ‘Moss Piglet’.

Show the class this video. Make sure you pause the images where necessary and read out the text for students who can’t yet read.

Show the class a full stop on a piece of paper and explain that this is the size of a tardigrade!
Give the students a piece of paper with a small water droplet drawn on it. Ask the students to see how many tardigrades fit in this droplet. They can use a pencil to draw the dots! Ask them to count as they draw.

Have an open-ended conversation about how many tardigrades might fit on your finger, in the palm of your hand, on your ear lobe, on your big toenail? How many would fit on your desk, your classroom, the school oval? There will be some wild numbers proposed. Allow that to happen!

Trace your hand on a page. Fill in the details, including nails, scars, knuckles and so on. Somewhere on your drawn hand can you draw a tardigrade? On your page:

• Name your tardigrade.
• Is it adult or a juvenile?
• Is it male or female? (females are bigger)
• Give it a special imaginary feature (e.g. a pair of shoes, a moustache, coloured toes)

Modification/Extension:

• Students could draw, paint or collage one of the extreme landscapes from the video and then add a teeny tiny sticky dot to represent a tardigrade surviving that environment.
• Students could make a diagram, model, painting, drawing or collage of a tardigrade. Older students could label it.

Content Description:

Foundation: AC9SFI01 Year 1: AC9S1I01, Year 2: AC9S2I01

Connected Learning Areas: Maths (Measurement, Space)

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Critical and creative thinking

Sink or Float?

What you’ll need: A clear plastic tub, water, several objects to experiment with (for fun, this could include a craft version of Moss Piglet!)

Activity: Remind the students of the moment when Moss Piglet sank to the bottom of the ocean. Prompt a discussion about the how and why this occurred. You could ask the students to come up with their own questions for the class to think about or you could use the following questions:

• Can Moss Piglet swim?
• Do very small things sink or float?
• Can large things float?
• Why did Moss Piglet sink and not float?
• How deep is the ocean?
• How big is the ocean and how small is Moss Piglet?
• Can people float? Can people sink?

Make a list of things that sink or float. Don’t correct students, just see what they come up with! Explain to the students that you are going to experiment with the idea of sinking and floating.

Step 1.

Collect objects to experiment with. This might include some of the items listed in the discussion. Co-design the experiment with the class or ask smaller groups to come up with their own experiment. For example:

• Take a vessel of water which is large enough so that the biggest testing object will fit. A clear tub works well because you can see the movement of the object. Place each item one by one carefully onto the surface of the water and record what happens!

Step 2.
Predict which objects might float and which might sink. This can range from a prediction through a class discussion to a complete writing task, depending on the year level. Make sure there is a table of the predictions, with space to record the results. For very young students, images can be used alongside words.

Step 3.
Do the experiment!

Step 4.
Compare the predictions with the results.

• What was surprising or unsurprising?
• Why do some things float, and other things sink?
• Were there big things that floated? Small things that sank? Why?
• Did the things that sink, sink at different speeds? Why?

Modification/Extension:

• Graph and compare the data.
• Investigate further the speed at which the objects sank.
• Investigate surface tension.
• Older students can investigate the relationship between weight, volume, density and motion (laws of motion).

Content Description –

Foundation: AC9SFI01 , AC9SFI02 , AC9SFI04 Year 1: AC9S1I01 , AC9S2I01, AC9S1I05 Year 2: AC9S2I01, AC9S2I02 , AC9S2I05

Connected Learning Areas: Maths (Measurement, Space)

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Critical and creative thinking

Introduction

This unit includes activities and possible assessment tasks linked to The Arts: Drama, Australian Curriculum 9.0 across Year 3 and Year 4. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing drama units or complete the entire unit of work with their students. Many of the activities include extensions or modifications.

The learning activities will encourage students to explore Moss Piglet as a live performance, with the possibility of creating and performing. They will help to generate whole class discussions and the sharing of different interpretations of the play and the characters, as well as provide opportunities for students to work independently in small groups to create moments of performance.

Learning intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Learn about storytelling through theatre.
• Work together in small groups to create performance moments.
• Reflect on techniques they have seen and to use those reflections to inform how they might communicate their ideas.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Use imagination and creativity in response to the themes and techniques being explored.
• Work collaboratively.
• Identify elements of drama in the work of others and use them to communicate ideas.

Achievement Standard

By the end of Year 4, students describe use of selected elements of drama in drama they experience, create and/or perform. They describe where, why and/or how drama is created and/or performed across cultures, times, places and/or other contexts.

Students use selected elements of drama when creating drama and/or performing. They collaborate to improvise and/or devise drama that communicates ideas, perspectives and/or meaning. They perform their work in informal settings.

Near and Far (scale!)

What you’ll need: Torches or footlights, two hats, objects such as toy horses, boats, dolls. Cardboard and scissors to create shapes for shadow work.

Activity: Explain to the students that you will be seeing a show where scale is really important to the work.

• What is scale?
• Has anyone seen a show or other artwork where scale is played with? Where there is something huge or something tiny? How did they achieve this?
• What happens when something huge is in a tiny world or vice versa?
• Has anyone felt very tiny is a situation? How about huge?
• How can artists show scale in a live performance? What about without special effects?
• Can you use ‘near and far’ to make things shrink or grow? Try this out with a student.

Groups of four or five can experiment with scale and ‘near and far’, using performance spaces marked out on the floor, objects of different sizes, torches and cardboard cut outs.

The groups can now create a scene or demonstration.

• Have a number of travelling objects written on cards, and place the cards in a hat (a boat, a car, a person, a horse, a bicycle, a monster).
• Now place a selection of locations (a forest, a desert, the ocean, a city, a swamp, a field etc.) in a separate hat.
• Select object and a place from the two hats, ask the students to come up with a small scene featuring at least three points where something grows or shrinks, a moment where they show something VERY small and/or VERY large. How do they achieve these things?
• Use lights/shadow, hand-made cut outs, replacement objects (large and small examples of the same thing).

Tip – experiment with what illusions they can create first and then tie them into a story!

Modification/Extension:

• This could be revisited after the experience of seeing the show and students could create small and large versions of the character to create with.

Content Description: AC9ADR4D01

Connected Learning Areas: Mathematics (Measurement), English (Language for expressing and developing ideas – Image).

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking

Live Feed!

What you’ll need: Video recording devices such as computers/iPads/video cameras and screens such as TVs, projectors, smart board, computer. SD cards or USBs, or cables to connect AV to the screen.

Activity: Talk the students about how live feed and video was used in the show Moss Piglet.

• What did it enable the artists to do?
• What information did we learn from those moments?
• Were they satisfying moments from the perspective of the audience?

Explain to students that they are going to create a short performance (with a beginning, middle and end) using either live or pre-recorded video. Their performance must include:

• A scientist or group of scientists.
• A discovery.
• Something the audience are not supposed to see (a secret, a mistake, a private moment, the truth). This moment will be the live feed OR pre-recorded moment.
• One group member can manage the video feed elements, if necessary.

Process:

• Plan your story. This can include brainstorming, improvisation, writing key moments in the story and creating characters.
• Work out who is playing who and what props or costumes you might need.
• Rehearse all moments from the performance.
• If you are pre-recording the video moment, film this.
• If you are using live feed, make sure you rehearse this moment into the off-screen action.
• Perform!

Modification/Extension:

• The video moment can reveal something quite unexpected. E.g. an actor climbs into a cupboard but we see on the screen that there is a school canteen in there! Or an actor walks out of the classroom and is immediately on the school oval!

Content Description: AC9ADR4C01 , AC9ADR4P01

Connected Learning Areas: English (Literacy – Creating Texts), Media Arts (Developing Practices and Skills & Creating and Making).

• Literacy
• Personal and social capability

Introduction

This unit includes activities and possible assessment tasks linked to English, Australian Curriculum 9.0 across Year 3 and Year 4. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing English units or complete the entire unit of work with their students.

The learning activities can provide a structure to explore Moss Piglet as a performance text and the incredible facts that inspired it. They will provide opportunity for students to interpret the text, analyse plot and character and create their own responses using language features with purpose in mind.

Learning Intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Experience a theatrical production as a text to be watched, heard, analysed and responded to.
• Create their own work by using characters, action, settings from the work as prompts.
• To work individually and as groups to use plot structures to clearly tell a story.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Use the themes of a theatrical production to create their own response.
• Identify and use different narrative structures and techniques to tell a story.
• Create responses using various language features and meaning inspired by the production.

Achievement Standard

Year 3
By the end of Year 3, students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts including stories. They relate ideas; express opinion, preferences and appreciation of texts; and include relevant details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They group, logically sequence and link ideas. They use language features including topic-specific vocabulary, and/or visual features and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts, recognising their purpose and audience. They identify literal meaning and explain inferred meaning. They describe how stories are developed through characters and/or events. They describe how texts are structured and presented. They describe the language features of texts including topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and how visual features extend meaning. They read fluently, using phonic, morphemic and grammatical knowledge to read multisyllabic words with more complex letter patterns.

They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories to inform, narrate, explain or argue for audiences, relating ideas including relevant details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They use text structures including paragraphs, and language features including compound sentences, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features. They write texts using letters that are accurately formed and consistent in size. They spell multisyllabic words using phonic and morphemic knowledge, and high-frequency words.

Year 4
By the end of Year 4, students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts including stories. They share and extend ideas, opinions and information with audiences, using relevant details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They use text structures to organise and link ideas. They use language features including subjective and objective language, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features and features of voice.

They read, view and comprehend texts created to inform, influence and/or engage audiences. They describe how ideas are developed including through characters and events, and how texts reflect contexts. They describe the characteristic features of different text structures. They describe how language features including literary devices, and visual features shape meaning. They read fluently and accurately, integrating phonic, morphemic, grammatical and punctuation knowledge.

They create written and/or multimodal texts including stories for purposes and audiences, where they develop ideas using details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They use paragraphs to organise and link ideas. They use language features including complex sentences, topic-specific vocabulary and literary devices, and/or visual features. They write texts using clearly formed letters with developing fluency. They spell words including multisyllabic and multimorphemic words with irregular spelling patterns, using phonic, morphemic and grammatical knowledge.

Miniature Worlds

What you’ll need: Magnifying glasses, A4 pieces of black paper with a circle 10cm diameter (or an equivalent sized square or irregular shape) cut in the middle of the paper. Butchers paper, markers, pencils.

Activity: *Depending on prior knowledge, children may need an explicit lesson on the language feature you wish to focus on in this task. This could be figurative language, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Take children outside onto a grassy area or garden. Try to avoid asphalt or concrete. Allow them to choose a spot where they can place their black paper onto the ground. The space left open in the centre is now their world. Allow them time to really look at everything in this space. Now, allow them to use the magnifying class to investigate the world. Guide them through an imaginative journey:

• What you are looking at is a whole world.
• Can you see any insects? If not, who lives in this world?
• What are some of the features in this world?
• Can you imagine that the blade of grass is as tall as a tree? Or that a woodchip is like a mountain? Or that the ant is a big as a bear?

Ask the children to write down all the things they can see. This is where you can explicitly request certain language features such as descriptive and figurative language.

• Imagine that you are a teeny tiny person (the subject) walking through your world. What sorts of things do you encounter? How does it feel to be so small? Can you imagine anything dangerous happening in this world? How would you handle that?

You could request children to explore verbs and adverbs here, as their imagined selves move through their imagined world.
You could stay outside or return to the classroom where students can use their ideas to create a story or poem.

Modification/Extension:

• After seeing Moss Piglet, children could use the same language features to re-tell the story of Moss Piglet. This could be done in a variety of modes.

Content Description:

Year 3: AC9E3LA03 , AC9E3LA07

Year 4: AC9E4LA03 , AC9E4LA08

Connected Learning Areas: Science (Biological Sciences), HASS (Communicating).

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking

Stop Motion Piglet!

What you’ll need: Modelling clay or papier mâché materials, media equipment (cameras or iPads or similar), computers, an app for stop motion, an app for storyboarding (such as Stop Motion Studio) or hard copy storyboard pro formas. A video on storyboarding.

Activity: As a class, brainstorm the features of the story of Moss Piglet. Consider plot (orientation, complication, resolution), setting and character.

Explain to the children that in pairs, they are going to adapt and re-tell the story of Moss Piglet as an animation. Allow them to brainstorm changes they might like to make. Do they change the ending? Is the main character a different kind of small animal and how does that change things? Do they change the locations?

Process

• Students to plan their main character, which could be constructed out of modelling clay, papier mâché or paper shapes.
• Show this video on storyboarding and explain that this is how the students will write and plan their animation.
• Students create their storyboards, with input from teacher.
• Students construct their character and any locations they might need. These can be simple drawn or collaged backdrops. Locations in the class or yard could also be used.
• Using their storyboard to guide them, capture their images and create their animation.
• Either using the stop-motion app or other movie making apps, text and music/sound effects can also be inserted.

Content Description:

Year 3: AC9E3LE05 Year 4: AC9E4LE05

Connected Learning Area: Media Arts (Creating and Making).

• Critical and creative thinking

Introduction

This unit includes activities and possible assessments in the areas of Science Inquiry and Understanding, linked to Science, Australian Curriculum across Year 3 and Year 4. Teachers can choose to use individual activities to complement existing Science units or complete the entire unit of work with their students.

The learning activities can provide a structure to explore physical and biological sciences inspired by Moss Piglet’s world. There are opportunities here for whole class discussions, group work and independent research. Some of the tasks for younger students can be adapted for older students and vice versa.

Learning Intentions

These units give students opportunities to:

• Consider how the themes of a theatrical production link to the science learning area.
• To question and predict answers to questions and outcomes based raised by the performance.
• To wonder, imagine and fact find ideas explored in the production.

Success Criteria

To what extent can students:

• Combine creativity and scientific thinking to come up with responses to questions and tasks.
• Plan and conduct an experiment inspired by the production.
• Communicate their scientific findings and ideas effectively.

Achievement Standard

Year 3
By the end of Year 3 students classify and compare living and non-living things and different life cycles. They describe the observable properties of soils, rocks and minerals and describe their importance as resources. They identify sources of heat energy and examples of heat transfer and explain changes in the temperature of objects. They classify solids and liquids based on observable properties and describe how to cause a change of state. They describe how people use data to develop explanations. They identify solutions that use scientific explanations.

Students pose questions to explore patterns and relationships and make predictions based on observations. They use scaffolds to plan safe investigations and fair tests. They use familiar classroom instruments to make measurements. They organise data and information using provided scaffolds and identify patterns and relationships. They compare their findings with those of others, explain how they kept their investigation fair, identify further questions and draw conclusions.They communicate ideas and findings for an identified purpose, including using scientific vocabulary when appropriate.

Year 4
By the end of Year 4 students identify the roles of organisms in a habitat and construct food chains. They identify key processes in the water cycle and describe how water cycles through the environment.They identify forces acting on objects and describe their effect. They relate the uses of materials to their properties. They explain the role of data in science inquiry.They identify solutions based on scientific explanations and describe the needs these meet.

Students pose questions to identify patterns and relationships and make predictions based on observations. They plan investigations using planning scaffolds, identify key elements of fair tests and describe how they conduct investigations safely. They use simple procedures to make accurate formal measurements. They construct representations to organise data and information and identify patterns and relationships. They compare their findings with those of others, assess the fairness of their investigation, identify further questions for investigation and draw conclusions. They communicate ideas and findings for an identified audience and purpose, including using scientific vocabulary when appropriate.

Who is Moss Piglet?

What you’ll need: Research materials online, this video, craft and stationary items, media equipment where necessary.

Activity: Ask the students if anyone knows what a Moss Piglet is. If they don’t, ask them to imagine. What clues does the phrase ‘Moss Piglet’ suggest? The class could co-create an image or make a list of features.

Reveal various images of a real Moss Piglet, a tardigrade to the students, including close ups. Allow a discussion to unfold.

• What do they see and how does that align with their original imaginings?
• What does it look like? What are it’s distinguishing features?
• How big is it? Find out!
• Explain to the students that this is a Tardigrade, which means Slow Stepper (Tarda Gradus) in scientific Latin. Moss Piglet is like a nickname, as well as Water Bear.

In groups, students can research aspects of Tardigrada, such as habitat, reproduction, diet, physical features but specifically their superpower which is their ability to ‘tun’ or turn their insides into a dormant, glass-like state in order to survive extreme conditions! (Don’t tell students this fact, let them find out themselves! It’s pretty amazing!).

Present these findings as though they are the scientist who discovered them (Johann Goeze). This could be presented in the form of a scientific journal article, a letter, role play interview or a documentary film.

Modification/Extension:

• If the school has access to a microscope, you could try to find a tardigrade by soaking moss in some water for a few hours and squeezing the liquid into a petri dish!

Content Description:

Year 3: AC9S3H02 Year 4: AC9S4H02

Connected Learning Areas: English (Literacy – Creating Texts), Media Arts (Creating and Making), HASS  (Questioning and Researching).

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability

Feats of survival!

What you’ll need: Research materials – hard copy/digital, stationary and/or computers.

Activity: Moss Piglet is truly resilient. A survivor. Tardigrades are an incredibly well-designed creature. Would you survive if you found yourself in Moss Piglets ‘shoes’? Humans are not designed to survive very extreme situations but sometimes they can and do!

In pairs, choose an environment that is dry, hot, cold, deep or gassy. It could be a location from the performance. It could be Mt Everest, the Mariana Trench, the Mauna Loa Volcano or Mars.

Brainstorm what you would need to survive a period of time in this place (a day, a week, a year?!). You may need to do some research about what humans need to survive extreme conditions.

Create a survival guide for your chosen location. Include facts about your location and human needs, maps, images. The guide could be a poster, a booklet, a digital chart, a video from the perspective of a science journalist.

Extensions/Modifications

• Students could work together to imagine an extreme environment and role play what they would do if they found themselves in it.
• Students could write a creative piece, imagining the journey of survival.
• Students could research real stories of survival and predict or research the scientific explanation.

Content Description:

Year 3 AC9S3I06 Year 4: AC9S4I06

Connected Learning Areas: HASS (Concluding and Decision Making), Health & P.E. (Making Healthy and Safe Choices), English (Literacy – Creating Texts), Media Arts (Creating and Making).

• Literacy
• ICT capability
• Personal and social capability