Discover

Exploring Animal Adaptations

Example Activity #1: An Animal Adaptation Quiz

This activity is a set of quiz questions about animal adaptation. They are marked for the student as they work through the set, and there is the option for incorrect questions to be revisited. It is an online task, but the learning experience closely resembles a worksheet quiz.

Example Activity #2: An Animal Adaptation Video and Quiz

This is another quiz activity about animal adaptations, but this example includes an animated video that students can watch and re watch to help them revise the topic and assist them in answering correctly. By doing this, the task is making some use of multimodal texts.

Example Activity #3: Build-a-Fish

An activity that makes better use of the interactive nature of digital tasks is this learning object from PBS Learning Media. This activity lets each student build their own fish, selecting body shape, pattern and mouth type. They can then swim in the reef, trying to hide from predators while also searching for food. The choices a students makes about the design and behaviour of their fish will determine their survival success. This is an activity where students can select, observe, manipulate and adjust their choices as they make better sense of the concept they are exploring.

Still Life Paintings

Example Activity #1 Watch a Video

Here is a time lapse video for students to watch. With their teacher, they can identify the techniques and tools used by the artist to create their art work, typing them into a word processing document.

Example Activity #2: Compare and Contrast

For this activity, students work with a partner to compare the still life paintings below. They will capture and organise their thoughts using a Read Write Think Venn Diagram. A quality response would show an insight and understanding of:

symbols - mood - elements - colours - warm or cool - arrangement - dimensions - brushwork - focal point - setting - lighting

Example Activity #3: Create a Still Life Art Work

The National Gallery of Art have designed a Still Life interactive where students can create and modify their own artwork. This task involves a higher level of technological fluency than the previous two. Students need to develop and understanding of the range of what’s possible to create with this tool and are able to iteratively modify and extend their design.