Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Part B: Where Can We Find Invertebrates?
5 minutes	Reflection

Part A: What Are Invertebrates?

Step 1.

If you want to teach this lesson outdoors, lead students to your outdoor learning space. Take a moment to review these Outdoor Learning Tips, including identifying any potential hazards and how to avoid the impacts of hazards.

Step 2.

Pose the following question to students and invite them to share their thoughts with the class:

What are invertebrates?

Explain to students that invertebrates are animals without a backbone or a bony skeleton. Humans are vertebrates, meaning we have a backbone and a bony skeleton. Invite students to reach around to their spine and feel the bones of the spine under their skin. Then invite students to feel other bones under their skin, such as their rib cages, their skulls, and their arm, wrist and hand bones. Explain that any animal with bones is a vertebrate.

Step 3.

Then pose the following questions:

So what kinds of animals might be invertebrates?
What kinds of animals don’t have bones under their skin?

Invite students to share some of their ideas.

Step 4.

Present the Invertebrate Flashcards, explaining that these are all invertebrates that you might find in the garden or schoolyard. Invite students to suggest what they think each animal is (answers available on the final page of the flashcards document).

Differentiation -

Foundation and Year 1: Spend some time talking with students about some of the features of each of the invertebrates and how these features help this animal to survive. For example, pincers might be useful for picking up food, legs are useful for walking, a shell is a useful home and is good for protection from predators.
Year 2: Use this Insect Life-cycles factsheet to talk about the life cycles of some of these invertebrates.

Part B: Where Can We Find Invertebrates?

Step 1.

Explain to students that many invertebrates are the creepy crawlies we find in the garden, such as insects, spiders, and slugs and snails. These are great invertebrates to focus on because you can find them everywhere!

Invite students to have a think about what kinds of invertebrates they have seen at home and around the school. List student suggestions on the board.

Step 2.

Select one of the invertebrates seen at school that was suggested by students, and explain that you will examine this animal in more detail (if it is one that is featured in the flashcards you could hold up this flashcard again).

Pose the following question to students:

What might this invertebrate need to survive?

Invite students to suggest answers and record some ideas alongside the animal's name on the board. Through this process, lead students to the idea that invertebrates - like all animals - need food, water and shelter.

Step 3.

Thinking about the invertebrate you are focusing on and thinking about how it lives at your school, pose the following question (older students could record some of their own ideas in response to these questions on the Student Worksheet before sharing with the class):

Where could this animal get food? Refer to the flashcards to find out what sort of food it eats.
Where could it shelter and have offspring? Refer to the flashcards to find out the type of shelter it needs.

Note: If you have a device handy, you could share the following clip with students which shows a micro-trapdoor spider living in a burrow it has made. The mother spider is the black shape at the end of the burrow, and the small white dots lining the burrow are its spiderlings (baby spiders).

Kangaroo Island Micro-trapdoor spider with spiderlings in a burrow (https://vimeo.com/554086004)

Part C: A Place For Invertebrates

Step 1.

Explain to students that they are now going to work together to make a place for some of the invertebrates at your school to live.

Create an invertebrate zone in a school garden - Select an invertebrates zone at your school. This should be somewhere that doesn’t get disturbed too often (it might even be behind a building where there are few visitors). Place some old logs in the zone, along with leaf litter and bark. Think about planting one or two native flowering plants to attract native invertebrate pollinators, like native bees or wasps. Avoid placing a dish of water in the zone as they may fall in and drown - instead, you could make sure your invertebrate zone is watered regularly and the leaf litter isn’t disturbed so that the leaf litter doesn’t dry out. You could add a little fence and a sign to inform people what you’re doing.
Create an invertebrate zone in pots - If you can’t manage a zone in your schoolyard, you could always create your invertebrate zone in a couple of pots, keeping them close together, sheltered and watered. Again, add a sign to let people know what you’re doing.
Build an invertebrate house - Make transportable invertebrate houses out of small cardboard boxes or milk cartons. Cut a small entrance into the box and place it in the garden, add a stick to the top to stop it from blowing away. Alternatively, take an old ceramic pot, turn it upside down and prop one side up with a rock to let the invertebrates in and out. Students can take their houses home for their own yards.
Make a bee hotel - Many Australian native bees are solitary, meaning that they live and work alone to build a nest for their offspring. However, because of habitat loss, there are fewer appropriate native plants and locations for bee hotels, so making one and positioning it in the perfect spot is a great idea. you can buy bee hotels but native bees have very particular requirements for nesting so it is often better to make your own to ensure it will be used. Find out more about bee hotels here: Solitary Bee Homes Factsheet.

Step 2.

Keep an eye on your invertebrate houses over time. Without disturbing the house, can you see any invertebrates settling in? Which ones and how many?

You could consider keeping a record of who is visiting and when they are visiting (e.g. seasons or time of day).

You could also undertake further research with your students to find out more about the invertebrates that are visiting.

Reflection

Engage students in a class discussion around the following question (older students could discuss their ideas in pairs and record their answer in writing on the Student Worksheet):

What were the most interesting things you learned about or saw in this lesson?

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Understanding Invertebrates

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