Colleen Dawson
reviews
Animals Foundation Phase (Learner’s Book)
Animals Foundation Phase (Teacher’s Guide)
Animals Intermediate Phase (Learner’s Book)
Animals Intermediate Phase (Teacher’s Guide)
Animals Senior Phase (Learner’s Book)
Animals Senior Phase (Teacher’s Guide)
Animals is part of the Environment Matters series for schools in Gauteng. It is a joint publication between the Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Conservation, Environment and Land Affairs (Dacel), the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE), and the Gauteng Institute for Education Development.
As the introduction says, this series of books has been written to ‘help teachers integrate environmental issues into the school curriculum, and therefore works toward the realisation of our constitutional rights”. The books are aimed at learners and teachers of Literacy and Life Skills at Foundation Phase, HSS, NS, A&C and LO at Intermediate Phase, and LLS and HSS at Senior Phase. They form an integrated series designed to provide supplementary material to enhance the learning and teaching of environmental issues. They follow an OBE curriculum and will be appropriate for use with the Revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS).
Foundation Phase
The two modules of the Foundation Phase books are Our Pets and Animals That Work for Us. There is a good mix of activities for learners. These include working with illustrations, making masks, introducing mime, and making a book. At the end of the Teacher’s Guide there are photocopiable work cards. The Teacher’s Guide is very well organised. For each unit, there are outcomes, curriculum links, assessment questions and ideas, and what is needed for preparation and resources. Both modules emphasise the responsibility that is required when you have animals to look after. This is an important and valuable theme to use when working with
environmental topics.
Intermediate Phase
These three modules are Wild Animals in Towns and Cities, Exploring Nature Reserves and Animal Care. Again, each unit has clear outcomes, curriculum links, assessment ideas, and what is needed for preparation and resources.
The practical ideas for teachers — such as ‘Visit each group whilst they are making …” — are very helpful. Effective group work can only happen when the teacher is continuously moving from group to group to listen and provide suggestions.
Senior Phase
The two modules of the Senior Phase are Animals as a Source of Human Food and Animals in Research and Product Development. This is aimed to cover the LLC and HSS outcomes. Some of these activities would also be useful to supplement NS teaching, particularly to cover RNCS Learning Outcome 3: Science, Society and the Environment.
The series has been written based on C2005 SOs and ACs. However, it is equally applicable to the RNCS, and a teacher who has a copy of the RNCS will have no problem in relating the activities to the relevant LOs and ASs.
Useful features throughout are an approximate time allocation for each activity. Teachers will need to read quite a lot of material to select the activities required for the particular lesson they are planning, but in doing so will become familiar with a lot of information.
There could be more guidance for teachers about mediating cultural differences around the keeping of animals. This could be used as an important way of understanding different cultures and their attitudes to animals.
A minor criticism relates to the use of human names such as Thandi and Simba for dogs. I have found that people are sometimes offended by having human names given to animals. This could be mediated by having an activity about how learners would and would not name their pets.
This series is an extremely useful resource to supplement the core learning material for the various learning areas.
For more information contact Victor Naidu at the GIED, Tel: (011) 728-7068 or Ranjini Pillay at Tel: (011) 355-1365