Wabisabi IBL Unit—Our Place

© 2019 Wabisabi Learning
Our Place
A Wabisabi Inquiry-Based 
Learning Unit
Year Level 2
wabisabilearning.com

Our Place
Year Level: 2
Global Concept: Interconnectedness
Wabisabi Inquiry Process
Learners are inspired to be curious about why places are important to people,
and connect examples of how a place can mean different things in order to
communicate that everything is connected by creating a presentation to
celebrate the special people, seasons, and changes in their place during the year.
Other Possible Lines of Inquiry
Curious
• Connection to place - why are places important to people?
• Different perspectives, importance of place in culture, history, geography
• Sacred places, community places
• How people from different places and cultures are connected to one another
Connect
• Place is what brings us together as a community in this school
• Examples of how a place can mean different things to different people -
Uluru or Ayers Rock?
• People belong to places and places belong to people
• Environments sustain living things
Communicate
• Everything is connected - people, places, all living and non-living things
• We have a responsibility to care for places.
• Earth's resources are used in a variety of ways
• People use science in their daily lives, including when caring for their
environment and living things

Create
• Multimedia texts that celebrate special places and how we are connected
to them
• Maps, drawings, and artworks that describe how we interact with places
• Make judgements about how science is used in our lives
• Create a presentation to celebrate the special people, seasons and changes
in your place during the year
Essential Question: “How do we affect each
other?”
Herding Questions
Interconnectedness:
• How do living things affect us?
• How do we and living things affect each other?
• How do we affect our environment?
• How does the environment affect us?
• Do we have a responsibility to care for our environment? Why?
• Does our environment care for us? How?
Connection to Place:
• Why are places important to people?
• What are the important places in your life?
• Do you feel you belong to the place where you live?
• What is a Welcome to Country?
Seasons:
• What are the seasons that we experience here?
• How do we know when the season is changing?
• Are seasons the same everywhere?
• What great things come with the seasons?

Connections Through Context and Relevance
• Eco warriors - caring for places of significance in our school, community,
and natural environment
• Sacred places - belonging to and showing respect for country
• My Place is special - sharing how we interact with our environment
through the seasons
• Ecosystems - the importance of preserving significant habitats and
keystone species
My Place is special - sharing how we interact with our
environment through the seasons
Students will examine how places in Australia have special meaning for the
people who interact with them. They will combine the information from
research of other places, and also the places that are special to them, to
create a presentation that celebrates how they interact with people, nature,
and special places over the changing seasons of the year.
Learning Intentions
HASS
• Describes a person, site and/or event of significance in the local community
and explains why places are important to people. HASS - Year: 2
• Describes how people in different places are connected to each other and
identifies factors that influence these connections. HASS - Year: 2
• Recognises that places have different meaning for different people and
why the significant features of places should be preserved. HASS - Year: 2
• Identifies how and why the lives of people have changed over time while
others have remained the same. HASS - Year: 2
• Poses questions about the past and familiar and unfamiliar objects and
places. HASS - Year: 2
• Reflects on their learning to suggest ways to care for places and sites of
significance. HASS - Year: 2

• Locates information from observations and from sources provided. HASS -
Year: 2
SCIENCE
• Identifies that certain materials and resources have different uses and
describes examples of where science is used in people’s daily lives. Science
- Year: 2
• Poses and responds to questions about their experiences and predicts
outcomes of investigations. Science - Year: 2
• Records and represents observations and communicates ideas in a variety
of ways. Science - Year: 2
• Describes changes to objects, materials and living things. Science - Year: 2
• Uses informal measurements to make and compares observations. Science
- Year: 2
ENGLISH
• Identifies literal and implied meaning, main ideas and supporting detail.
Students make connections between texts by comparing content. English -
Year: 2
• When discussing their ideas and experiences, uses everyday language
features and topic-specific vocabulary. English - Year: 2
• Creates texts that show how images support the meaning of the text.
English - Year: 2
• Creates texts, drawing on their own experiences, their imagination and
information they have learnt. English - Year: 2
• Uses a variety of strategies to engage in group and class discussions and
make presentations. English - Year: 2
Challenge
For Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, belonging to
country is not so much about ownership as it is a responsibility to care for the
places that sustain life, embed culture and connect people to their systems of

art, science, religion and kinship. Everything is connected. This is the same in
many other cultures around the world. It's no surprise really, when we
understand the complexity of life on Earth, and the fragile systems that
connect to one another to give us our home - a unique and special planet
where we can live, breathe, eat, drink and enjoy beautiful and special places.
Stories are also important, fun to read and are also a great way to learn about
different people and different places. There are two wonderful stories,
Walking with the Seasons in Kakadu, and Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo. As
you read these, and other stories, think about the different ways you interact
with your environment.
Spend some time investigating how different people around Australia,
including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples use their knowledge of
science to meet their needs, including how they understand their
environment and know how to get the things that they need.
You will share some stories about your own interactions with your special
places, and you will interview a range of people in your local area to get their
stories and ideas.
In this challenge your class will create a presentation that celebrates how you
interact with people, nature, and your special places over the changing
seasons of the year. You will need to include everyone's perspective, and you'll
have some new skills to learn when it comes to stop-motion video. You'd
better get started!
Deﬁne
During a discussion about the Global Concept and Essential Questions,
identify the ways in which places are important to people. Herding questions
will help to drive the conversation as you unpack the ideas of belonging to
places and connections between people, their culture, their history, and their
environment.
In this unit, the class will create a presentation that celebrates how you
interact with people, nature, and your special places over the changing
seasons of the year. You will need to identify all the parts of this challenge so
that you have a shared understanding of the task at hand.

Success Criteria
Students have written, discussed or presented a descriptive deﬁnition of
the challenges they face in the unit that includes the following:
• Identifying ways in which their local environments are important to
them.
• Understanding that places mean different things to different
people.
• Learning about how this place, and other places might be special to
others.
• Discovering how science is important in our daily interactions with
the environment.
• Learning how to create a stop-motion video, and all the different
components of this process.
• Interviewing other people to include their ideas and experiences.
• Understand the essential question is about interconnectedness - we
are all connected to each other and our environment.
Discover
Students will examine the message explored in literary texts associated with
environmental and cultural themes. These books might include Walking with
the Seasons in Kakadu, Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo, Mirror or Here
Comes the Rain.
Student groups are required to research the beneﬁts these featured
environments and their own local environment provide to people and
animals, and create an extensive list. They will share their own stories and
ideas. The group will split up and circulate around the school to conduct
interviews on how the students, teachers, and staff members feel connected
to their own special places.
Each team member will use questioning techniques and will also need to
identify the key components to contribute to a stop-motion video about your
local community, its people, and places.

Success Criteria
• Develop questions when reading stories together.
• When reading, identify connections between people, their culture,
their history, and their environment.
• Brainstorm ways the characters from the text(s) use a knowledge of
science in their everyday lives. Is there something we'd like to know
more about? Could we investigate in a practical, hands-on way?
• For example, they may explore how different cultures have made
inks, pigments and paints by mixing materials.
• Another idea could be to explore ways of monitoring information
about their local environment and Earth’s resources, such as
rainfall, water levels, and temperature. This might include:
• Planning and conducting investigations.
• Participating in guided investigations to explore and answer
questions.
• Posing questions, and making predictions about familiar
objects and events.
• Represent and communicate observations and ideas in a variety of
ways.
• Identify the key components of a stop-motion video.
Dream
Now is the time to dream your ideal solution to this challenge. Thinking about
what you've learned and discovered, what will you include in the
presentation? The Larrakia people have six seasons, but you may have a
different number of seasons where you live.
How does the environment change over the year, and how will you represent
these changes in your story? Will you need to write your own story together,
and learn about the seasons as you go? How will you include everyone's
perspective?
Imagining your ideal presentation, what does it look like, feel like and sound
like? Dream big as you imagine the possibilities for what you will create, in
terms of words, pictures, and three-dimensional elements.

Students may begin to write their own stories and ideas at this time,
individually or in groups to contribute to the final product.
Success Criteria
• Brainstorm and share ideas about the presentation.
• Contribute to a list of all the things you'd like to include.
• Begin to create a wall of inspiration, including colours, ideas and
thoughts about how everything connects together.
Design
Now let's create the plan as we bring all of these ideas together. Students will
need to determine which parts of the presentation they will be responsible
for. Who will be managing the different components of the production? Do
you have all of the information you need? How will these different elements
of production be scheduled?
Is there a narrative, visual, and three-dimensional component to your section
of the story? Who will be doing which part? If you are working in groups, now
is a great time to prepare and present your final pitch for peer feedback. Each
group could bring their storyboard and plan for a debrief.
Success Criteria
• Create a story board for your section of the presentation.
• Finalise your script, and the production plan for your presentation.
• Explain your or your group's thinking, and the key messages you
want to share.
• Share your plan with the group, answer questions and consider
feedback.
• Provide helpful feedback and insights to others.
Deliver
The deliver phase is the creation and delivery of the final presentation.
Determine how each group will contribute their section of the story, and how
they will be accountable to one another throughout this process. Decide as a

group how you will present your stop-motion animation to the wider school
community. Plan an event to launch the presentation. Who will you present
to? Invite community members to provide feedback, or to ask questions
about the project.
Success Criteria
• Contribute to the production of the final animation.
• Be responsible for the filming of your group's section, or the
particular role you have been assigned in the production process.
• Respond to questions, and consider feedback.
• Pose some questions for others, or consider particular insights you
have gained from the work of others and share this with them.
Debrief
As a class, reflect on the whole process. What worked well? What have you
learned from this experience - beyond content, think about what new ideas,
understandings and abilities you have gained.
How do you feel about the work you have done? What questions are you left
with? Where do you think you should go to next?
Success Criteria
• Contribute to a classroom conversation, listening and responding to
the ideas of others.
• Make some judgements about whether you might have answered
your essential question.
• Share how you think your work has celebrated the connections
between people and places.

Further ideas aligned to the tenets of Global
Digital Citizenship
• Exploring the signiﬁcant stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples that connect to signiﬁcant places. How they are shared, in written
or spoken word, or through artistic representation, dance and song.
• Biodiversity - the interconnectedness of ecosystems in the natural world.
How do we create and preserve ecosystems in our school environment?
• Environmental stewardship - identifying the ways humans manage and
protect resources, such as reducing waste and caring for water supplies.
• Scientists for the Future - recognising that many living things rely on
resources that may be threatened, and that science understanding can
contribute to the preservation of such resources.
• Create a class book for younger children that celebrates the different ways
that children interact with their world in the format of the Alison Lester
books.
Resources
Lucas, Dianne and Searle, Ken, Walking with the Seasons in
Kakadu, Allen and Unwin, 2003
Our Seasons, Millner Animations 2012 https://vimeo.com/
82160284
Lester, Alison, Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo, Hachette
Children's Books 2000
Baker, Jeannie, Mirror
Good, Clare; Cox, David, Here Comes the Rain, Scholastic Press
1999

Wabisabi IBL Unit—Our Place

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