Pulling myself together

Over the past year or so (about the same time period when I dropped off the blogging radar) I have been busily creating websites to pull together lesson plans and units I had written, taught and collaborated on.
I was inspired by some of the great work being produced by professional organisations around Australia who have created "one stop spots" for a number of units. These webpages house ready-to-teach units of work that are aligned to the Australian Curriculum. Typically these websites contain information about how the unit addresses specific aspects of the curriculum, lesson plans or ideas, resources, assessment ideas and links to other online resources.
Here are some of the really good ones I have discovered:

• E4AC - English for the Australian Curriculum
• ASTA Science Web
• Geogspace
• AC History Units

All of these sites have excellent units that can be used as is, or adapted to suit your class.

I decided that a website might be a good way to pull together planning ideas into an easier to follow unit plan with links to useful online resources and downloadable files. One of my earlier attempts is an English unit: Whodunnit? I have also created a website to house all of my planning for an entire year in Year 4.
As more and more schools are increasing student access to technology in the classroom and many are going 1:1, I wanted to develop online resources that would support teachers in planning quality learning experiences aligned to the Australian Curriculum but also create websites that would be accessible to students using laptops or iPads.
I worked with some Year 4 teachers and their classes last year to plan and implement a Science and Technologies unit, Let's Build a Theme Park. In this project, I tried to include things that would be useful to both teachers and students, including a clear inquiry structure (using the 5Es) and Learning Intentions for the unit.
Some colleagues in Year 2 asked me to create some audio recordings of some stories about St Francis of Assisi for a unit they were doing on Saints Who Care About Creation. I needed somewhere to put these so that they would easily be able to find them that year, and into the future. I created a website called Creation, Who Cares? and was able to link numerous resources that I found or created to support them during the time that they were teaching this unit.
My aim is to now pull together other units I have taught or worked on in the past so that they are easier to share with other teachers. As I am teaching units this year in Year 4, I will create other websites to support my students and to curate my planning ideas.
Since I have now ended up with a diverse collection of units and trying to explain to people where they might go to find them is becoming more challenging, I created a virtual home for myself to curate my collection as it evolves.

janebatham.weebly.com

Please take a look at what I am working on and feel free to share this work with others. I am hoping that by sharing what I have done so far I will get plenty of feedback from others so I can improve as I go. Knowing that others find these resources useful will help me to remain motivated to complete the task.

A History Unit for Anzac Day

The Year 2 History component of the Australian Curriculum requires that students know

the history of a significant person, building, site or part of the natural environment in the local community and what it reveals about the past

and that they understand

the importance today of an historical site of cultural or spiritual significance; for example, a community building, a landmark, a war memorial.

Next term, with Anzac Day occuring in the first few weeks, it seems timely to study our local war memorial as we develop some of the history skills that my students will need later in the term when we study our local Show.
I am posting my unit plan here in case it is of use to others. I am so far enjoying implementing the new Australian Curriculum, but it would be great to see what other people are doing so I can know if I am interpreting it as the writers intended. I figure if I post my plans, perhaps others might either do the same, or at least give me some feedback about what they are doing with the new History curriculum.

I am really keen to provide engaging and motivating learning experiences for my students and to avoid too many worksheets. I have used the 5Es Inquiry Process as a structure for the planning - Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate. There are three assessment items for this unit.

There are two files to download because I made it a PDF and one of the pages is landscape so it is a separate file.
Anzac History Plan File 1
Anzac History Plan File 2