Hands-on Habitats: Making a Terrarium

This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:

• creative thinking
• critical thinking
• collaboration
• communication

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description:

Year 5 and 6, Science

• examine how particular structural features and behaviours of living things enable their survival in specific habitats (AC9S5U01)
• investigate the physical conditions of a habitat and analyse how the growth and survival of living things is affected by changing physical conditions (AC9S6U01). 

Relevant parts of Year 5 and 6 achievement standards: Students explain how the form and behaviour of living things enables survival. They explain how changes in physical conditions affect living things.

NSW Syllabus outcomes:

• examines how the environment affects the growth, survival and adaptation of living things (ST3-4LW-S).

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium - oversee class discussions and group tasks. Lead students in creating a terrarium.

UN SDG 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

• Target 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species.

• Materials for creating a terrarium:
  • clear glass containers, such as an aquarium of any size, a goldfish bowl or a large glass jar
  • pebbles or gravel with pieces around the size of a marble
  • activated charcoal to help with drainage
  • potting mix - pick soil that suits the plants you need (e.g. cacti and succulents prefer different soil to ferns.
  • small slow-growing plants of different colours or textures
  • tools such as a spoon, tweezers, a small trowel, or a chopstick.
• Paper and pens/pencils.

This is an original Cool.org lesson.

Inspire Young Scientists in the Primary Classroom - Primary 

Quick Summary: This course is designed to assist you in amplifying your students’ interests in learning science. The course will help you discover how to develop the scientific literacy of students and science experiments.