EkoSkola Malta

Looking after Sea Animals

KG1-Year 1

Communication and Language; Understanding the World; Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Children who believe in themselves fully aware of their potential and capabilities.

– I show interest in my immediate and wider environment

Children are socially adept.

Children who develop empathy, respect and acceptance of different points of view.

– I am caring and show concern towards others

Children who are effective communicators.

Children who are aware of different language systems, notably Maltese and English.

– I listen to and understand simple stories in my language.

Children who are versatile with the use of numbers, data handling, shapes and measurement and print in context as a means of production of knowledge and information as well as meaning making and comprehension.

– I sort objects into simple categories.

Children who nurture positive attitudes towards learning and become engaged and confident learners.

Children who develop a range of cognitive skills to include labelling/identifying, recognition, sorting, hypothesising, predicting, comparing, sequencing and grouping.

– I explore associations and cause-and-effect

– I classify and sort objects by size, shape, texture and function

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 14: Life Below Water

Two felt charts (ideally in different colours)

Sea turtle hand puppet or soft toy

Appendix 2.1 – Script: Sea Turtles;

Appendix 2.2 – Template: Happy Sea Turtle

Appendix 2.3 – Template: Sad Sea Turtle

Appendix 2.4 – Template: Sea Creatures and Objects Game

Internet connection

For students whose school is situated near the sea, a clean up activity can be organized prior to this lesson so the KGE will prepare pictures related to the items found on the beach.

The educator tells the students that on that day they have a special visitor in the classroom. The educator gestures that she/he can hear someone knocking on the door, she/he opens the door and fetches the sea turtle soft toy/hand puppet.  The educator introduces the sea turtle (most of the children would know that it is a sea turtle) and the educator has to provide a ‘voice’ for the sea turtle.

Development

The educator uses the script (Appendix 2.1 – Sea Turtles Script).  The children are shown the video ‘A wonderful memory of the last nest of the season in Ghadira’ (https://youtu.be/H5VFMu1B8rQ).  The sea turtle explains that when the hatchlings hatch they encounter a number of dangers.  Some are natural like sea birds or big fish that eat the hatchlings while other dangers are man-made like waste from plastic, oil, discarded fishing nets.  These end up in the sea on purpose or by accident, for example, a plastic bag can be thrown in the blue bin but for some reason it flies away and still ends up in the sea.  So it is best that we reduce the use of plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc.

The educator introduces the game to the students.  The teacher has two pieces of felt, one with a happy sea turtle at the top (Appendix 2.2 – Happy Sea Turtle) and the other with a sad sea turtle at the top (Appendix 2.3 – Sad Sea Turtle).  The teacher has prepared a box with flashcards (Appendix 2.4 – Sea Creatures and Objects Game) that have velcro attached to them.  The children will be called one by one randomly, pick an item from the box, say what it is and paste it on the correct piece of felt according to if the object harms the sea turtle or not.*

The game can also be played by each child separately.  The teacher presents every student with two A4 papers or preferably two pieces of cardboard from reused cereal boxes which have been painted by the students beforehand, one with a happy sea turtle and the other with a sad sea turtle at the top.  Every student has the pictures cut out in a small container and chooses which are harmful or not for the sea turtle.

Conclusion

The educator tells the students that now that they know how we can help sea turtles, it is important that we tell other people too.  So the educator will record a message from individual students giving advice to people as to how we can help sea turtles.  The messages will be shown on the school’s Facebook page.  The educator will make sure that the students whose video clip will be shown have consent by their parents that such material can appear on the school’s Facebook page/website/social media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loggerhead_sea_turtle

‘A wonderful memory of the last nest of the season in Ghadira’

https://youtu.be/H5VFMu1B8rQ.