Topic: Fish

Target group

4th‑grade students of elementary school

Core curriculum

Grade IV
VI. The natural environment of the immediate area. Pupil:
13) recognizes and names organisms living in water.

General aim of education

Students observe and name fish.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• indicate the adaptation of fish to life in water;

• recognize selected species of fish living in Poland and the Baltic Sea;

• give examples of marine fish species living in the Baltic.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • discussion.

• programmed

  • with computer;

  • with e‑textbook.

• practical

  • exercices concerned.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• activity in groups;

• collective activity.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook;

• notebook and crayons/felt‑tip pens;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

• A month before the classes, the teacher instructs the students to set up a home guppy breeding, consisting of two females and one male. Students receive a description of the breeding establishment and an observation chart. Together with the teacher, they set the criteria for the assessment of observations and the form of presentation of its results.

Introduction

• The teacher explains the aim of the lesson and together with students determines the success criteria to be achieved.

Realization

• Students get married and present the results of guppy breeding observations. They assess each other's presentations according to pre‑defined criteria. Then, in the class forum, they justify their peer reviews.

• The teacher displays an interactive illustration showing selected species of freshwater and marine fish found in Poland. Together with students, it analyzes the appearance of fish and discusses their occurrence.

• The teacher asks students to carry out the recommended interactive exercise themselves.

Summary

• The teacher explains the homework and sets the criteria for his assessment with the students. Then he asks students to finish the sentence: „In today's lesson, I learned that ...”.

Homework

• Students carry out the Task 1.1..

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Fish

Fish breathe using gills, which absorb oxygen dissolved in the water. A fish directs water through its open mouth to the gills. In the gills, which are well supplied with blood, oxygen from the water enters the blood. Fish have sense organs: sight, hearing and a specific sensory organ called the lateral line, which registers the movement of the water.

Over 40 thousand species of fish have been described in the world so far, and presumably many more are waiting to be discovered. In Poland's inland waters and in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea around 120 species of fish have been confirmed so far. Certain species are less well known, as there are few of them, or they are not caught. Others we know well – because they are delicious.

We can count the following among the best‑known species of freshwater fish living in Polish waters: common carp, crucian carp and trout. The most frequently mentioned among marine fish are herring, sprat, cod and mackerel and flatfish (flounder and the European flounder).

Certain fish live in freshwater and saltwater during different stages of their lives. For example, salmon live in the sea, but to spawn, they swim up certain rivers. Salmon hatch from spawn laid at the bottom of caldwater streams. The young salmon spend their first two or three years in rivers, and then swim to the sea where they grow and mature over the next few years. Adult salmon seek out the river in which they grew up and return to its headwaters to spawn. After laying their spawn, they die.

During the course of an eel's life, it lives in both seas and inland waters. Eel larvae hatch in the Sargasso Sea after the death of their parents. They grow and migrate along with the ocean current towards the mouths of rivers. After 2‑3 years, they enter lakes and rivers where they spend the next few to a dozen years. Only then do they migrate in the opposite direction. They swim along with the flow of the river to the sea, and then to the Atlantic Ocean and on to the Sargasso Sea, to lay their spawn and die.

• The ways that fish are adapted to life in the water are, among others, gills, fins and a streamlined body shape.

• Fish can be categorised into freshwater and marine species; some of them can function alternately in both of these environments.