Informative Media about Biodiversity

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

• creative thinking
• collaboration
• communication
• community engagement

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description:

Year 3, Science

Students learn to:

• compare characteristics of living and non-living things and examine the differences between the life cycles of plants and animals (AC9S3U01).

Year 3, English

Students learn to:

• plan, create, edit and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive written and multimodal texts, using visual features, appropriate form and layout, with ideas grouped in simple paragraphs, mostly correct tense, topic-specific vocabulary and correct spelling of most high-frequency and phonetically regular words (AC9E3LY06).

Year 4, Science

Students learn to:

• explain the roles and interactions of consumers, producers and decomposers within a habitat and how food chains represent feeding relationships (AC9S4U01).

Year 4, English

Students learn to:

• plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, using visual features, relevant linked ideas, complex sentences, appropriate tense, synonyms and antonyms, correct spelling of multisyllabic words and simple punctuation (AC9E4LY06).

Relevant parts of Year 3 Science achievement standards: Students classify and compare living and non-living things and different life cycles.

Relevant parts of Year 3 English achievement standards: Students 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.

Relevant parts of Year 4 Science achievement standards: Students identify the roles of organisms in a habitat and construct food chains.

Relevant parts of Year 4 English achievement standards: Students 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.

NSW Syllabus outcomes:

Stage 2 

A student:

• plans, creates and revises written texts for informative purposes, using text features, sentence-level grammar, punctuation and word-level language for a target audience (EN2-CWT-02)
• compares features and characteristics of living and non-living things (ST2-4LW-S).

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Literacy 

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium - facilitate discussion and research

UN SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

• Target 11.4: Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.

• Activity sheet - Biodiversity Bingo Board
• Factsheet - How-to guide
• poster paper
• markers or pencils
• student devices
• Student Worksheet

This lesson was created in collaboration with The Biodiversity Council.

Special thanks to our content partner, The Conversation and to The Garry White Foundation, The Hugh D. T. Williamson Foundation, Wedgetail and The James Kirby Foundation for their generous financial support.

What Makes a Species ‘Threatened’? Teaching Biodiversity and Species Protection

Quick summary: Learn about biodiversity and threatened species with Ecologist Thomas Nixon. You will learn what biodiversity is and how it is regulated in Australia, and you will look at some specific case studies that show what is being done across the country to protect our unique biodiversity.