Learner Profile Attribute Posters - Black with coloured polkadots

I have recently added my first paid item to my TPT store. It's a set of learner profile posters. This may be of interest to those working in an IB school teaching the PYP programme.

Each poster has a gorgeous black and coloured polkadot background and cute clip art from My Cute Graphics (my latest addiction!). It costs just $2.

It's often hard to find printable International Baccalaureate resources so I aim to make some more in the near future! If you have any requests for resources, please comment below or send a request through the link in my TPT store.

New TPT store and a secret walker freebie poster

Well hello there, Blogland! It has been a long time since I've been here. I haven't made blogging a priority of mine this past academic year but I aim to change that for the summer months. 

I've decided to open a TPT store. I'm all for sharing free resources and I will continue to do so but I would like to sell some of the items that took more time and effort. 

I have been amazed at the power of the internet and many people I know working in other IB schools in different countries had seen my learner profile posters up on the walls. I'm delighted that they have spread. However, I have seen lots of pins on Pinterest where people have taken screenshorts and edited them and not given any credit to me as the creator. 

The creation of my TPT store was spurred on by link shared on Facebook by Valerie King AKA Múinteoir Valerie. She has been an active Irish teaching blogger for just over a year. Have a look at her blog. If you are job-hunting, some of the most recent posts should be of interest to you.

Anyway, back to the store. I've added my first item to the store and it's free for all. It's a secret walker poster. I use this in school as a classroom management technique to ensure nice behaviour in line when walking to and from the play area and the lunchroom. All of the children's names are in a cup. I choose one at the beginning of break. I don't tell the children who the secret walker is until they come back after their break. If the secret walker behaved responsibly, I reward them with a star sticker (that is placed on a chart under this poster). If not, I don't reveal the secret walker's identity but explain why the mystery person did not receive the reward. 

Hallowe'en craft: Simple woolly ghost

The Hallowe'en holidays are fast approaching and it's time to get stuck into some nice spooky crafts. Here's a simple ghost craft for children to make. 

I had previously blogged about making woolly octopuses. Simply make them in white, following steps 1 - 3 you have a ghost! 

You could also make the full octopus, adding scary faces (using wool or felt) to make different types of spooky monsters.

What you need:

• Scissors
• Wool
• Book
• Googly eyes (and glue if they're not self-adhesive)
• An elastic band

Step 1:
Wrap the wool around the book 60 times.

Step 2:

Put and elastic band tightly around the wool, about a third of the way down. Then tightly tie some wool (of the same colour) just above the band. Remove the elastic band. Do the same a few centimetres from the top. 

Step 3:
Snip the loops at the top and bottom. (You should now have 120 strands of wool at the bottom.)

 Step 4:
Take 15 strands of wool and plait to form a leg. Repeat this to create 7 more legs.


Step 5:
Add the eyes et voilà!

Creative Drawing Activities

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Ashleigh from Ashleigh's Education Journey wrote a great post about how she organises her early finishers activities. These are focused on critical and creative thinking.

 I particularly like her creative drawing task cards. The child is given a squiggle to begin and has to create a meaningful picture with that as a starting point. She has also shared some examples of how the children have used it. Visit her blog post and scroll to the end to download those creative drawing task cards for free.

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Some other great creative drawing resources are:
The Anti-Coloring Book by Susan Striker

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This is a series of books for children and adults in which you are given a part of a picture and some instructions. As the instructions require reading, this is more suited to older children. You can download some sample pages from this book for free on her site.

Do you Doodle? by Nikalas Catlow

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 This is along the same lines as The Anti-Coloring Book series. You are presented with the start of a picture and some written instructions to help you to complete it.

Behaviour management clip charts

After seeing so many creative clip charts on teaching blogs, I've decided to give this behaviour management technique a go this year. The idea is simple: Everybody has a clothes peg. Everybody starts the day on green. The children are asked to move their pegs up or down according to how they behave.

I am teaching 5 and 6 year olds this year and so far, have found this technique really effective. The children get really excited about moving their pegs up. It's great for trying to target specific behaviours e.g. "I will move everybody in the most cooperative group up after this activity. They also really don't like moving it down. A very calmly worded, "Please move your peg down" is a lot more pleasant than raising your voice and getting angry.

The clip chart I have been using is from Jessica at Under the Alphabet Tree. You can download it for free from her TPT store.

Here are some of my favourite clip charts that I've stumbled upon:

This rock 'n' roll clip chart from The Inspired Apple:

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A basketball-themed one from Mrs. Tyner at Create 2 Educate:

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 A cute jungle-themed one from Curriculum to the Core:

This pirate-themed clip chart from My (Not So) Elementary life:

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Join the dots for various, differentiated lessons

I had a little problem this week. I wanted to create lots of differentiated (but in some way similar) homework tasks. Some children in my class are counting in ones, others skip counting in 10s and some really need to be challenged. I decided to give a join the dots activity. Little did I know how many different types of dot-to-dot worksheets already exist online.

Source: Kidscrafty.com

Here are some of my favourite sites with FREE join the dots activities. Kidscrafty.com has some great dot-to-dot activities based on sequencing capital and lower case letters,counting in ones (some are incredibly simple!) and skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

I found some multiplication dot-to-dot activities on prasinipriza.com like this 6 and 7 times tables practice sheet.


For more challenging worksheets, look no further than this resource from Education.com! It has skip counting activities for 2s, 3s, 4s etc. and the sheets contain many dots (so the children have to skip count beyond 100!). There are 15 sheets of various difficulty levels in this pack.

Identifying narrative elements and writing stories

I came across a lovely post from Jenn at Finally in First about how she approaches narrative texts in her classroom.

She has used the same flashcard headings to organise the children's responses to a story and to plan their own narratives.

Jenn has shared a freebie with these headings and a story planning sheet. I really like the simplicity and clarity of these resources. Click on the image below to download them for free from her TPT store.