Component two

The students in my class range from below average to above average. At below average students
such as Nathan have limited literacy and writing skills. In the classroom, this means that these
students require more assistance in writing based tasks. For example, Nathan needed help in the
form of someone scribing his ideas down into coherent sentences and into an organised story. For
the average and above average students they have the capability to write and organise their ideas
within their writing. In designing this unit, I tried to incorporate hands-on activities as well as asking
students to both show their information in pictures and writing.

The unit of work that I designed for this class is for geography and specifically climate zones of
Australia. The assessment for this unit has written components as well as a pictorial component. For
the individual assessment, the differentiation that I have made is to allow the lower students to
dictate their ideas or represent their ideas pictorially. For those at average and above average they
will show their information as much as possible in written form.

The evidence for these three students is literacy based, though the unit I am going to planning for is
geography. I chose to collect data with a literacy focus because students will be researching and
writing about climates. Literacy skills such as comprehension and sentence structure are important
for this unit and the summative assessment. Throughout the unit students will be collecting
information about climates and the environment, plants, animals and humans within these climates.
As such reading, comprehending and then writing the information down are part of this. The literacy
skills observed through these pieces of evidence and the students overall literacy level will guide the
planning and implementation of the unit.

An important document when planning any unit for schools in Australia is the ACARA (Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority) curriculum document. For this unit, as there are
two year levels to plan for, there were two main outcomes being covered. In the development of
this unit and the students subsequent engagement of this unit there are several background
outcomes and skills students are developing. These relate to inquiry and skills within the HASS
curriculum, specifically the researching outcomes.
The above is a screenshot from lesson four of the unit of work.
In this lesson students engaged with photos from around Australia. These photos related to specific
climate zones of Australia. Students then had to sort these photos and match them with their labels.
This is a part of identifying the climate zones and provides students with a hands-on activity.
Students are also required to work in teams or groups and show listening and group work skills.

Throughout the rest of this unit students are working on a theme each week and relating it back to
their focus climate zone. This is working towards the students creating a factsheet on climate zones
of Australia to present to the class and then to make into a class book.

The above is an example of the activities that students complete each week. These relate to lesson 5
of the unit plan.
In this activity students aim to describe the climate and environment. There is space for students to
draw their information if they find writing challenging. This means that there is still something to
assess for these students. For students of the same level as Nathan I will be looking mainly for a
representation of the facts through pictures or through dictating to an iPad or support person. I
would encourage Nathan and others to attempt simple answers such as where one, two or three
words or simple sentences are possible.

For Thomas and John, I would encourage these students to write in sentences and complete each
activity as it was designed to be completed. For those students who are above average like Michael I
would encourage them to try and find the information themselves where possible.

The aim of these activities is to collate information. This information will then be placed onto a
good copy to be used as an individual assessment. Students then work as a group to make a group
copy which would then be placed into a book and placed in the library.

Above is a possible rubric for this unit and assessment. The rubric has yet to be finalised as myself
and my mentor teacher are still working on this together. At this stage, this is still a draft and up for
review.

The overall unit has links to literacy through the development of a factsheet. Factsheets have
similarities to information reports. There are several shared skills that students need for these pieces
of writing. These skills include researching for information, organisation of ideas, understanding the
language features of an information document and understanding the structure of an information
document.

Running alongside this unit is an English unit where in the second half of this unit students are
learning about information reports. This sequence of lessons on information reports begins in the
coming week. Information reports have also been looked at in literacy rotations and science.
In planning this unit, I looked at the students prior literacy skills to help differentiate tasks. The
students researching and information gathered throughout the tasks in geography, literacy (both the
English lessons and literacy rotations) and science are then used as prior knowledge to be assessed
in a summative assessment at the end.