Teacher resources – Year 5&6

TrackSAFE has prepared teacher resources including individual lesson plans and supporting resources aligned to the Australian Curriculum in the following areas:

  • English
  • Health & Physical Education
  • The Arts

English

This unit of work is a five lesson sequence designed using the Australian Curriculum: English Foundation to Year 10. It aims to develop students’ understanding and usage of subject specific vocabulary associated with TrackSAFE actions and to develop effectiveness with a range of spelling strategies.  Students will develop and practise skills in producing well-structured reports with an emphasis on bullet points. These reports will be produced for a variety of audiences and will be based on practical and meaningful contexts.

View and download the teacher notes, individual lessons and resources or the whole unit.

Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 5 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.

Students brainstorm vocabulary associated with the train network using coloured pens and paper or online mapping tools. They then connect TrackSAFE vocabulary words using hexagons to create a vocabulary chart, make new words about safety from base words using prefixes and suffixes, connect TrackSAFE vocabulary words using hexagons to classify words based on common features, or play a sorting game to classify TrackSAFE vocabulary words as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Students experience modelled writing and help the teacher write a report about the safety measures they used last time they went on a train trip. They then write a report on teaching someone to stay safe on a platform or pedestrian level crossing, use sentence starters to report on train and track safety, or complete a small project identifying and talking with a group of people in the community who need extra help to catch a train, writing a report to help improve safety for that group and sharing it with the community.

Students explore the types and purpose of investigations, and discuss the purpose of making a plan for an investigation. They then write a plan to conduct investigations through research on barriers to hearing at a railway station, a survey on peer pressure around tracks and trains and how it affects young people, research on how difficult it is to stop a train, or an interview with train staff about safety around single and double tracks.

Students share their plans of how they plan to conduct their investigations, and then conduct the investigations planned in the previous lesson (research, survey or interview).

Students give a brief verbal report to share the results of their investigations and explain the safety message learned from their investigation. They identify a group in the community who would benefit from knowing the information they have discovered and discuss the most appropriate way of communicating this message to them.

They reflect on the creative choices made in the advertisement ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ (optional) then choose an accessible and appropriate method to communicate their safety message to their identified group, such as a tweet, news report, picture book, or lesson plan.

Health and Physical Education

This unit of work is a three-lesson sequence designed using the Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education Foundation to Year 10 and fits within the safety area of learning in the Personal, social and community health strand. These lessons support this through developing students’ knowledge, skills and understanding of safety actions needed to stay safe in the community and in road environments when near train tracks.

View and download the teacher notes, individual lessons and resources or the whole unit.

Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 3 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.

Students work in small groups to categorise the meaning of the word ‘safe’ to them, and what it means for different people in the community. They create a word cloud and formulate a class message about being ‘safe’. They then identify hazards around a pedestrian level crossing and compile a pocket sized list of ‘safe paths’, create a keeping safe strategy for stick figures on station platforms, or design an island train network with a proposal justifying the safety design decisions.

Students view and discuss the advertisements ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ and ‘Legend’ (optional). They explore the target audience in advertisements and using humour to get people to consider safety differently. They discuss influences or circumstances that can cause people to forget or ignore what they know about safety. They then create funny mini-plays using their inner voice to help people make smart choices around pedestrian level crossings, explore emotional responses of people involved in risk taking through a debate about managing behaviours of youth around trains and tracks, or create a role play about the behaviours of adults as role models for young people.

Students create a class mind map to explore how much they know about safety to keep themselves and others safe, in everyday scenarios as well as near trains and tracks. They then

  • design a teaching program and manual to help a student who is deaf stay safe on the pedestrian level crossing and station;
  • interview a person who uses a wheelchair and create a presentation about challenges and strategies to help keep them safe around trains and train tracks;
  • design a game to deliver key TrackSAFE safety messages to Year 3 and 4 students, or
  • design a questionnaire for other students to evaluate their ability to keep themselves and others safe around trains and train tracks.

The Arts

This unit of work is a three-lesson sequence designed using the Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation to Year 10. It aims to develop and enhance students’ imaginations and creativity through individual and collaborative means using voice, body, and instruments in visual and performance art.

View and download the teacher notes, individual lessons and resources or the whole unit.

Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 3 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.

Students explore improvisation and devise an improvised drama based on a local community train or track safety scenario. They then

  • choreograph a dance to show the importance of moving in ways to keep their and others’ body behind the yellow line on the platform;
  • explore and improvise a performance about ways they can help manage risky behaviour of others in their local community and keep them safe around trains and tracks,
  • or develop characters to create an improvised performance on how their characters keep themselves and others safe around tracks and trains.

Students explore complementary colours in railway posters and advertising. They study artworks depicting level crossings and discuss the elements, principles and use of colour. They then

  • use complementary colours to create a cartoon character who is a TrackSAFE hero and a safety message in a speech bubble; or
  • create a TrackSAFE poster for display on trains or platforms.
  • They share their artwork with the class, discussing the choices they made about colour and their impact of the safety messages.

Students explore the elements that make up jingles and nursery rhymes, choosing their top five to study in depth about lyrics, messages, humour, repetition, meter and rhyme, rhythm and pitch. They then

  • compose and perform their own jingle to encourage others in their local community to make wise choices when near train tracks and use percussion, tuned instruments, voice and dance to support the performance or
  • create an advertisement with an accompanying jingle to promote a TrackSAFE message to people in their local community.
  • Students record or video their jingles to share with the community.