1. Understand what animals need in order to grow

Lesson Starter: Using the starter slide, ask children to think about us (humans) and a bear. Can they tell you what different things we need to grow?

Presentation - Starter Slide

Answer questions and take part in activities during the presentation. Stop the presentation at the relevant slides: Talk Partners; AfLs; Songs. Take part in the Choral Response Questions activity (see Assessment section) after the Keywords/Rocket Words slide.

Key Concept:

During this unit, each lesson contains a key concept question housed in the '30 Second Challenge' slide. To help children master this content so the knowledge moves from their short term memory to their long term memory, at the beginning of the follow on lesson the question from the previous lesson is revisited. 

The questions covered during this unit include:

1. What are the four things animals need to survive and grow?

2. Where do birds live? Where do birds build their homes? What do birds make their homes from?

3. How do animals get food?

4. How do adults help a newborn baby?

5. Give an example of an amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal.

6. What would happen if an animal ate the wrong type of food?

Presentation

Watch the Expert Film where Vet Chris Tomlinson explains how to care for a puppy.

How we deliver the Gatsby Benchmarks:

2 - Learning from career and labour market information:  Pop along to Developing Experts career’s zone to find out about jobs in your area.

4 - Linking curriculum learning to careers: This unit showcases careers in the people who work with animals. Access our 360° virtual work tours.

7 - Encounters with Further and Higher Education: Pop along to Developing Experts career’s zone to find out about training providers in your area.

Presentation - Expert Film

Watch the Lesson Assignment films to help with today's choice of activities.

Pass the Puppy

Sit in a circle and play a game of Pass the Puppy. Pass the toy puppy around the circle. Only the puppy holder can speak. Name one thing that you need to do in order to care for a puppy or an object you would need, without repeating any of the previous answers. 

If the children are struggling to identify answers give them hints (what would it like to eat?, where would it sleep?, etc.) and write answers on the board as you go.

This activity can be followed up with the "A Dog's Needs" handout. 
 

Indoors or Outside?

Using the Indoors or Outside page of the Handout, ask the children to tick the boxes according to whether they think each animal would live indoors, outside or could do both.

Animal Adjectives

The children should work in groups, up to 4 in each group. Each group will look at the 4 pictures of animals from pages 3&4 of the Handout.

Ask the children to discuss the animals and think of adjectives that they associate with each one. It could be a word to describe the animal in terms of how it makes them feel, the size of the animal, what it feels like, it's colour, what it does, etc.

Two of the pictures are of animals likely to elicit positive reactions and two are of animals likely to elicit negative reactions.

Introduce the activity but do not mention the idea that some animals usually have certain characteristics associated with them. 

Remind the children it is an opinions exercise and they cannot be ‘wrong’, however they should be able to give reasons for their adjectives.

In a given amount of time, the children discuss adjectives associated with the animals and either write their words around the picture, or try to remember them, depending on their writing skills. It may be prudent to nominate one writer for each group. 

When they have finished go through their answers together and see how many times the groups have agreed on words for particular animals. Does anyone not agree with any of the words?

Teacher then leads a discussion on the items the children noted and the reasons behind particular feelings towards/adjectives used for certain animals. 

Finally, using the Animal Adjectives page of the Handout (page 5) the children are to write out one adjective for each animal.

Pass the Puppy
Toy dog/puppy
Page 1 of Handout

Indoors or Outside?
Page 2 of Handout

Animal Adjectives

Quiz
With their talk partners, the children are to go through the quiz at the end of the presentation and answer the questions.

Quiz in presentation