New history unit for Years 1 & 2: Technology and Tradition (Toys and Games of the Past)

This week I’m working with my colleagues to develop our units for Even Years Term 3.  Today I worked with the Junior team to develop a history unit, and you can download it from the Goodies to Share menu:

Technology and Tradition (Toys and Games of the Past)

 

New year 3 & 4 unit: Celebrations around the World

New Units

This week has been planning week and I have been working with teams of teachers to update existing units or write new ones for the Australian Curriculum (history and science).  We’ve also been tweaking these units to include more Deep Thinking activities.

Almost all our existing science units have been shelved in favour of the terrific Primary Connections units – the only things we have had to do is to restructure their scope and sequence plan to suit an odd/even years curriculum so that we can accommodate composite classes when we occasionally have them, and to audit the lesson plans for deep thinking activities and add more/substitute when needed.

The new history curriculum has meant much more work than this, and our program of integrated units is still a work in progress.  However this week, thanks to a great team of teachers (Deb, Adam, Louise and Sally) we have completed Celebrations around the World for Years 3 & 4.  It’s designed to cover ACAR’A’s Year 3 history content:

Celebrations and commemorations in other places around the world; for example, Bastille Day in France, Independence Day in the USA, including those that are observed in Australia such as Chinese New Year, Christmas Day, Diwali, Easter, Hanukkah, the Moon Festival and Ramadan (ACHHK064)

Y3&4 Celebrations Around the World Even Years Sem 1

Please bear in mind that this unit was written from scratch and has not been trialled yet.   We’d be interested to receive any feedback about it, and we welcome any resources that you are willing to share.

New year 5 & 6 ANZAC unit: Indigenous War Service

New Units

Indigenous War Service: this unit is (with permission) adapted from Indigenous Service, a resource for primary schools published by the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.

Please note that I have changed some of the activities and worksheets to allow for more deep thinking and more use of thinking tools.  I will develop the resources for these as I need them, and plan to upload them here, but if I forget feel free to remind me with a request using the comments box below.

Please note also that the unit as planned by the original authors is very comprehensive and would take two terms to teach in a typical one-hour per/week library program.  So I have split the unit in half, with the first three investigations being taught in even years and the other three in odd years.

Finally, note that this unit is part of our whole school ANZAC scope and sequence plan which you can find here.

• Y5&6 Indigenous War Service Pt 1 (even years)
• Indigenous Australians Glossary
• Venn Diagram Indigenous Service (benefits)

PS I’m also going to whip up a lesson or two about Jandamurra (1873-1897), the Kimberley warrior and indigenous patriot who tried to defend his country against European settlement in the 19th century.

Australian Curriculum Units (update)

If you have already downloaded the existing Year 1 & 2 Info Lit template, (see the Goodies to Share page) you will need to download Version 2.  I had forgotten to make a section for Aboriginal Perspectives Across the Curriculum.

I am now well into planning a nice little Australian Curriculum unit for Years 1 & 2, called Scary Creatures.  It has a Science focus i.e. what body parts do scary creatures use to attack or to defend themselves.  (That’s what reminded me to add the Aboriginal Perspectives section, because I’m using Shake a Leg by Boori Monty Pryer and Jan Ormerod to show how Aboriginal Communities used dance to teach their children to stay away from dangerous creatures).

I’m tweaking the planned sequence of activities as I teach each lesson and hope to have it available for download here before too long.

At the same time, I’m reviewing the units I taught in term 1 and (where I can) converting them into an Australian Curriculum unit.  They’ll be available before long too.

What are other teachers doing?  Is anyone else playing around with the new curriculum??

Update: Australian Curriculum Literature Units

Hmm. After a frustrating correspondence with the ACARA website in which I suggested some busy-teacher-friendly improvements, I have given up expecting them to provide downloads in a usable form and have begun the long, slow, laborious task of formatting the English PDF document into Word.  Why on earth teachers can’t be provided with a document that could be cut and pasted into planning documents without this busy-work, I do not know…

So, it’s taking a lot longer than I’d hoped to get a unit of work ready to share….