Expose students to a variety of texts about the farm
Rosie's Walk
- This story can be used to establish the context of farm.
- Read Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins.
- Make a large cut out picture of Rosie and large cut out pictures of places Rosie walked. For example: around the pond, across the yard, through the fence.
- Make labels for these. Hand out the labels and cut outs to children and re-enact the story.
- Emphasise the prepositional phrases.
- Innovate on Rosie’s Walk to make a class big book about Rosie coming to school. Make explicit the prepositional phrases. For example:
- Rosie the hen came to our school.
- She walked across the playground.
- She walked into the library.
- Begin a word wall about the farm; once sufficient numbers of words are on the wall, students can classify these into categories, for example, animals, tools, places on the farm, food etc.
- Set up a range of items and artefacts related to the farm: eggs, wool, hay, gumboots, pictures of farm animals, toy tractor, garden tools, honey, milk. Students explore each item and pictorially record what it is, where they have seen it and what they know about it. Students share their findings in small groups.
- Find online videos about farms and farm animals and explore these as information texts. Ask students why these texts have been created? What information can we gain by watching the texts? Who are the creators of these texts?
- Browse the picture story books to make a list of animals we find on a farm. Students use plastic toy animals or pictures of animals to sort into the categories of 'Animals I might find on the farm' and 'Animals I might not find on the farm'.
- Working with syllables, students clap out the names of different farm animal breeds. For example: different types of cows – Jersey, Shorthorn, Angus, Hereford.
- Students work in groups, and use pictures to investigate the different breeds of one animal.
- Discuss the observed differences.
- Students use different art media to represent the different breeds.
- Collect simple to read information books about farms and farm animals from the school library and explore the features of these texts – headings, bolded words, index, glossary. Students make their own glossary of words related to the farm unit.
- The teacher shares a lunchbox with students and identifies how some of the food originated on the farm. A flow chart which includes visual and verbal (i.e. written) elements may be a useful way of illustrating this for students, and shows them another way of representing non-fiction information. Using the teacher’s model, students examine their lunchboxes and identify where their food originated (where possible). Students might draw their own flow chart using the teacher’s model as a guide.
A Year on Our Farm
This story is read from the point of view of a child who lives on a farm. It depicts the cyclical nature of farms and how activities on the farm are related to the seasons.
This book can be explored in conjunction with 'Walking with the Seasons in Kakadu', which focuses on the indigenous link to seasons.
- Look at the double page spread of the aerial view of the farm.
- Use the prepositional phrases focused on when reading Rosie’s Walk to describe the position of places on this farm, for example, across the yard, around the pond, through the fence.
- Students engage in Think Pair Share to focus on what the animals do during each of the seasons. Make explicit the prepositional phrases that we need to use, when telling others about the time something is happening. In summer, during the winter months etc.
- Write shared sentences about each of the animals for each season and focus on the verb group, as the part of the sentences telling us what is happening. For example: In spring, the sheep are shorn. In spring, the hens lay their eggs. In summer, the farm dogs stay in the shade.
- Dramatise farm activities and farm actions and through discussion highlight the verb groups to illustrate what is happening.
- Make lists of each of the animals listed in the story of A Year on Our Farm and discuss the animals changing needs are across every season.
- Identify the needs that are constant across all of the seasons and the needs that are particular to one season.
- Think about the food, water and shelter needs each animal has and how this may differ amongst the animals.
- Discuss and role play the responsibilities of the farmer, in relation to the animals’ need for food, water and shelter.
- Students draw themselves as a farmer and write about the things they do on their farm.
- Make a class farm out of building blocks. Divide sections of it into the paddocks for the different farm animals. Students make paper animals and farmers to populate their farm, which can then be used for imaginative play. Take an aerial picture of the farm and provide students with a copy of it. Students label the different paddocks and areas of the farm.