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Assessment for learning

Meet the Termites

Meet the Termites learning module  

What do students know about termites?

Can students record key ideas on the group retrieval charts?

Which students might need direction to use the glossary?

Interdependence 

Interdependence_termites 

Check student responses for understanding of:

  • roles of each group in an ecosystem (producers, consumers, decomposers) and be able to identify the members of each group;
  • energy flow within an ecosystem;
  • the interdependence of the elements within an ecosystem.

Interdependence Food Web Summary
Students can right click mouse to print out their food web summary statements. Students could justify the statements they have chosen as true.

Impacts 

Termite impacts 

Can learners:

  • describe some of the implications, both short-term and long-term, of disturbances within ecosystems?
  • Identify possible solutions?

Assessment as Learning

Impacts 

Learners reflect on what they have learnt about savanna ecosystems and how their initial ideas/understandings might have changed.

Termite Trails

Ask students to make connections between termites and their own lives. By asking students to brainstorm questions and anecdotes arising from their own lives, background knowledge can be activated. Also, students with less background knowledge may benefit from hearing other students' connections.

Meet the Termites - What is the social structure of termite colonies?

Present and discuss different perspectives and experiences of termites. Groups collate words they expect to find in Meet the Termites. Cluster these and use as headings for a retrieval chart on termites.

Complete Meet the Termites section.

 

Interdependence - Why are termites the life-blood of savanna ecosystems?

Think, pair and share activity prior to students exploring this section. 

Complete Interdependence section

 

Impacts - How do weeds, feral animals and wildfire threaten savanna ecosystems?

What could threaten savanna ecosystems? Brainstorm and cluster ideas.

Complete Impacts section

Offline students create a Consequence Map or a Futures Wheel showing one of the key impacts on tropical savanna ecosystems (social, cultural, economic and environmental).

Using a Futures Wheel learners place an event (impact) in a circle in the centre of a document. Consequences from this first event are placed in a second ring of circles, then a third, and so on. The futures wheel identifies expanding consequences. 


What are some possible solutions?

What might impact on termites? Describe/illustrate the effect.

Students revisit their thinking to the key question - Why are termites the life-blood of Australia's tropical savannas? What would they now add or change? In their learning journal, students record their answer.