First Aid Unit

My second biggest seller is my First Aid Unit. This also happens to be my favourite unit to teach. It is fun and engaging for the teacher and students! Today I thought I would go into a little more detail about what the unit contains.

The three page planner contains 5-6 steps for each lesson. This keeps it short and succinct for a busy teacher but you do need to be careful that you really flush out each of those points while teaching. It utilises many different teaching strategies and moves at a steady pace through the topics. By the end of the unit students will know how to;

• Identify risks
• keep themselves safe
• give first aid in different situations
• identify when they need to get help
• know what to do in an emergency
• determine when to call 000/911
• know what information to give when calling 000/911
• explain and act out DRS ABCD

The unit also comes with a series of first aid posters. Use these for your reference, for display, for the activities or make them into a reference book for your class library. The first aid topics covered in this unit are;  burns, nosebleeds, wounds, chocking, DRS ABCD, CPR, broken bones, sprains, stings and bites.

 
The best way to learn is by doing and so students have ampule opportunities to (pretend) practice the skills they learn. Towards the end of the unit students get given scenario cards (examples below) to act out.

The unit features a great deal of higher order thinking as students are asked to compare strategies, retell and summarise information and share their knowledge with others. There are venn diagrams, retrieval charts, flow charts, T-charts and lots of discussion and collaboration.

It includes provision for both Australia (000) and America (911) but contains Australian English.

Available for purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers, Teachers Market Place and Teachers Notebook. (click on the site to take you to the resource.

How to Find Your Ranking on TPT

2019 UPDATE: TPT has stopped doing the ranking system :-( Sorry!

Update: If you are in the top 50 000 sellers you can now find your ranking easily here http://tpt.naujok.com/index.php . Just type in your store name and click on 'get rank'. So simple and easy! If you don't come up you can still use the system below and start from page 1000.

I discovered a post on the sellers forum once that talked about his/her ranking on Teachers Pay Teacher. After quite a while I discovered how to find my own ranking. It is not the easiest thing to do but if you're curious or just the competitive type then keep reading.

Step 1: Go to the TPT homepage (not your dashboard).

Step 2: Scroll down a little way and in the left hand column you will find the heading 'View Sellers' Click either Top Sellers or by State/Provenience. Unless you fairly high up in the rankings of your State/provenience I don't recommend you go looking in Top Sellers....You will be there for quite some time!

Step 3: Click on your State/Provenience if you are going down that route.

Step 4: On each page press Ctrl - F which will bring up a search bar. Type in your user name. Do this for each page until you you find yourself. Like I said before...it isn't easy and it's time consuming. There are 50 results per page so multiply the page you are on by that to find out your rough ranking. Down the bottom where it says that it will also tell you the number of  people in total in that specified area.

Step 5: I am a little addicted to checking my ranking and after the first time you'll know which page to go to each time. It find it updates within 10 minute of me selling a product.

Remember that while your store is growing so is everyone else. Your ranking will go up and down.

Also remember that this is based on all time sale records. The ones in the top 50 have been on TPT for quite a while.

I like to look at who the people are above and below me so I can get to know my fellow sellers and find some interesting products (and check out the competition). 

Welcome Banner

This year I am trying to bring my class rainbow theme together. I never thought much about classroom themes before which lead to an eclectic collection of posters and resources. If I had the money and time to start all over again I would go for a straight purple theme but this seems unreasonable so I decided to go with a rainbow theme.
It has been a bit haphazard of a theme but it is slowly coming together. Make sure you are following me on this blog to see when I post my classroom tour sometime in February.
I have caught onto the welcome banner craze (???) and couldn't find one I liked so I made up my own.

 I plan to hang this so it is visible as soon as you walk through the door. I just have to laminate it.

***Update****

I have now included bunting that spells the word GOODBYE! so you can glue it to the back of the WELCOME! bunting if displaying in the middle of an area. If you do that though remember that the letters need to be glued in the opposite direction of the welcome letters to read the right way. I also fixed the bunting background up so the lines all go the same way!  

You can purchase this sign along with my classroom rules posters (more to come on that soon) from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Persuasive Writing Year 5 Complete Unit

My most successful product to date is my Persuasive Writing Unit for Year 3.

I have finally done up a planner along these lines for Year 5. It features fun and engaging activities, relevant persuasive topics and will assist your students to do well in NAPLAN. While it does have some overlap with the Year 3 planner it has some completely new lessons and is a more targeted unit.

Persuasive Writing Unit

The package is a complete 10 week unit on persuasive writing (exposition writing). It includes a planner based on ACARA curriculum that features a variety of interesting teaching strategies and the worksheets and posters to go with each lesson.

The planner was written for year 5's but is easily adjustable for using in year 4 and 6 classrooms. 

At just over three pages the planner features five to six steps for each lesson, keeping it simple and succinct. Teachers need to use their own skill to ensure the lesson remains explicit and teaching opportunities are not missed.

The lesson I am most excited about is entitled 'Pick a Side and Justify'. It is the introductory lesson into the topic and is based off the 'Would You Rather' Game. Students are put into groups and then teacher calls out a would you rather... Students then discuss which one they would rather and why (they must pick one!). Then students record their justification on a speech bubble and then glue that on to their chosen side on a T-Chart on a piece of giant paper. It is sure to engage all your students and get them justifying their answers.

Available on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Market Place

Best Website for Lower School Educators!

My favourite site for lower school resources is TeachThis.

This Australian website has some incredible resources on it, all downloadable for a simple yearly subscription fee (at the time of posting this it was 49.95, the same price it was when I first signed up 5 years ago). 

It has posters for display, games, word wall cards, book covers. worksheets and the list goes on and on. I love them because they are bright, colourful and motivating. Not to mention most resources are available in a variety of fonts.

Another thing I really like about this site is that you can view the preview of all their downloads before you sign up. I like to go through and make sure there are enough things on a site like this that I want to download before I sign up. A quick scroll through just one of their categories and I was signing up.

In a year three class I don't find myself using as many of their resources as I did when I was in a grade one class. But it is still worth it's value in the middle school. 

There is one huge downside to TeachThis....be prepared to go through reams of paper and stacks of ink!

My top 5 favourite resources on TeachThis are: 

+++++ CVC games 

Great for teaching students to sound out and identify initial, middle and final sounds. A variety of types of activities. Some are even self correcting.

+++++Rainbow Facts Poster

I use this poster to introduce rainbow facts and then have this available to students during consolidating activities.

+++++ Money Game

I don't often play this as its intended to be played. I use the shops with class money. I printed multiples of the shops and then cut them up so that students could 'buy' something and take something with them (they give them back at the end of the game). There are so many leveling options for this game and various challenges you can give students.

+++++ Descriptive Writing Cards

Absolutely fantastic for getting students to write descriptively about something. 

+++++ Story Wheels

I use these for interesting whole class story writing lessons and for students who just can't come up with ideas during other writing activities.

============ I truly love this site. I was not paid or asked to do this post :-) ==============

Angles

Today I want to share an idea with you for teaching angles. Towards the end of last year I needed to revise angles with my students. The year 3 outcome is about comparing angles sizes in everyday situations. 

To make it fun and motivating I got the students to make movie clapperboards. I gave them a strip of white paper (made from folding an A4 sheet in half three times). They coloured it in with diagonal black stripes and then punched a hole through the end of it and half of a black piece of card. 

I drew an example up on the board for each of the next steps. 

I got students to divide their sheet in half. On the top section they had to come up with a movie name that had angles in the title. My example was Angry Angles. Then they wrote their (director) name. We used this opportunity to revise the use of capital letters.  

They split the bottom section into three sections. We wrote the headings acute, right and obtuse in each of the boxes revising them as we went along. 

Students then went around measuring angles (using the clapper at the top) in the classroom and writing examples of each in the applicable boxes.

It was a very motivating activity and looked great displayed on the walls.

Simple Door Decoration

I see so many gorgeous door decorations on Pinterest, but unfortunately my door faces out into a very windy corridor. Anything I put up doesn't last very long.
Wanting to perk my door up a little I tried adding a border to the little window on my door. I think it makes my door stand out a little more and look inviting.
If you look on the window you can also see the mustache and glasses I have up. This looks funny when people are peaking in or out and the always makes people smile.