Step-by-step Art Units Dragonflies and New Zealand Cultural Art

Here in New Zealand we have been enjoying a wonderfully relaxing and hot Summer vacation. I have taken a break from all things 'School' until we had our team planning meeting yesterday. This does seem early as we only start back with Staff Days on the 30th but my new team this year is awesomely talented. One of our members will lead 2 international conferences for IBO before we go back this term, so we thought we would get a jump on things early. The other member is an eLearning guru and our school's ICT leader. Lucky me I say :)

At the end of last year I chose to make a classroom move to the senior block as an opportunity came along to shift from teaching Year 4 (9yr olds) to teaching Year 6 (11yr olds). Daunting at first as this meant an over haul of my teaching materials to suit the older kiddies, but I knew it was an opportunity to create lots of lovely new resources to share with you guys.

I will keep you updated as I go :) For now I would like to show you 2 art resources that I posted to TpT today. They are both published as PDF books. 

1) Dragonfly Dreams
This is a unit I first created with 7 yr olds and WOW! I think you'll agree - what a great job they did.

Dragonfly Dreams is available from my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

and on my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

This lesson also has a poetry partner for teaching students about Similes. Take a look at it in my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

or on my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

PRAISE FOR SIMILE POEMS guided lesson plan for dragonfly POETRY WRITING

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was just about the best thing ever to teach poetry with similes! The slides were beautifully created with vivid colors, and my students were totally engaged from start to finish! Just could not be happier!

  
 

2) Maori Cultural Pendants & Panels

This unit was born out of a unit I taught about New Zealand's First People - The Maori, to 10 yr olds. There was very little teaching resource available around on this topic for English medium schools at that time, so I compiled it into an art unit that has proven very popular with teachers here in New Zealand.

Cultural Panels is available from my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

and on my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

PRAISE FORMaori Cultural Pendants & Panels

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️I'm not an art teacher, just a general ed teacher, but the way the lessons are laid out with lots of descriptions and pictures makes me feel very empowered to guide my students through this piece of art. This will supplement our unit on Polynesia nicely.

Enjoy :)