Science
Activity Sheet Name: How to plant a seed
Year Level/Age Group: Prep (5-6 yrs)
Objective: Introducing flora concepts. Introducing procedural writing to beginning writers.
Instruction: This activity works best when used during a ‘Plants and Gardens’ unit, where children have had lots of hands-on experiences planting seeds and caring for a garden. After modeling the writing process for ‘How to plant a seed’, children are each given a copy of the activity sheet. Children cut out the sentences and put them in order. These may be pasted back onto the activity sheet or, as a handwriting task, children copy the simple sentences onto the lines provided. To complete the task, children need to draw a picture to match each sentence.
Alternatively, for more experienced writers, this can be completed as an independent writing task. Begin by having children fold a piece of paper into six squares and label each square from 1-6. In each square, illustrate the different steps involved in planting a seed. As a class, brainstorm the ‘helpful’ words they will need to complete their writing task (e.g. dig, soil, sun, water). Children are then ready to attempt this procedural writing task, using both the word list and their numbered illustrations. This is a great task as even beginning writers’ experiences success with the visual aides and word lists.
