Desert survivors

Desert survivors addresses AC Science Understanding ACSSU043 Living things have structural features and adaptations that help them to survive in their environment, through the context of exploring how living things survive in desert environments.

Explore our new sequences for Year 5 aligned to AC V9

Desert survivors provides students with hands-on opportunities to:

• explore how plants lose water through their leaves
• investigate how surface area affects the rate of water and heat loss
• draw conclusions about what water loss might mean for plants and animals in the desert
• investigate camouflage and how it may help animals survive in the desert and discuss why some animals are not camouflaged
• examine if structural features of animals are helpful adaptations for surviving in their environment

Students apply their new learning by:

• designing, planning and conducting an investigation to see if features of an animal are structural adaptions that help it to survive in a desert environment

Linking science with literacy

In the Primary Connections approach, students are supported to create representations that draw on and strengthen their literacy development. In Desert survivors, students represent and explain their understanding about how Living things have structural features and adaptations that help them to survive in their environment, by creating these representations:

• Annotated drawing
• Graph
• Oral presentation
• Summary
• Data table
• TWLH chart
• Word wall

This is a classic Primary Connections sequence aligned with the Australian Curriculum V8.4. It is only available as a downloadable package.

The Desert survivors sequence package includes all the resources you need to teach this sequence, including:

• The Desert survivors unit PDF
• Equipment list
• Australian Curriculum v8.4 alignment
• Student eResource sheets
• Assessment resources:
  • Assessment rubrics
  • Work samples
  • Student self-assessment
  • Achievement standard class checklist

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