Ninja Notes

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Five Easy Christmas Tree Projects for Leftover Bits and Pieces

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Do you have lots of odds and ends leftover from various Christmas art porjects and crafts over the years? Here are five projects to help use them up. Come find the free art project instructions and get some new ideas for your upper elementary students. These make great gifts or decorations during the festive season.
Rolled Christmas Wrapping Paper

If you’re like us (and most teachers), you likely have lots of bits and pieces left over from previous projects. We often have to buy a class set of things and always have one or two left over. The good news is that we have some projects that can use some of that up and still create awesome Christmas tree projects for your art class. Have your students gift them to their families. Come check out these Christmas tree projects.

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40 Great Books for Inspiring a Growth Mindset

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Add these books with characters who are overcoming challenges to your classroom library. Having a growth mindset is important for learning and these books are a great way to show students how to work through learning challenges. Come check out our list and tell us which ones we've missed.

Having a growth mindset means knowing how to rebound after a failure or not giving up when learning something new. Children are incredibly resilient, but developing a growth mindset needs to be taught. Many students have a fear of failure, and many parents today prevent their children from experiencing it. Learning to fail is a healthy skill that will serve a child throughout their life. Come learn some of the activities and books we use to help students learn to have a growth mindset.

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Scary Halloween Books for Your Classroom Library

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Are you looking for some scary Halloween books for your upper elementary classroom library? We've collected titles of great Halloween books from our students and update our list all the time. Come have a read!

Whether you’re creating a Halloween-themed classroom library or planning some eerie read-alouds, these titles deliver thrills, chills, and laughs. Many are proudly written or illustrated by Canadian talent. We love to share scary books all year. Our students ask for them. Many of them want to read a haunted story or something that is a little creepy. You don’t have to read scary Halloween books at Halloween, but that is part of the fun.

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How to Teach Poetry Using Drama

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Instead of teaching poetry by simply reading or writing it, how about encouraging students to act it out. Teach poetry using drama to add a new dynamic to your language arts lessons.

Poetry is a beautiful and expressive form of literature that often expresses emotions, paints vivid imagery, and can be fun to read and write. Learning about poetic elements and figurative language can be engaging and memorable by teaching poetry using drama.

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How to Host Your Own Book Debates and Battles

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Inspire a love of reading and encourage your students to choose new books by using book debates. We've outlined the process to use this in your upper elementary classroom today based on the format for Canada Reads. Come take a look.

If you live in Canada, you might have heard of Canada Reads. Canada Reads is an annual “battle of the books” competition organized and broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We have enjoyed the event for years and thought about how much fun it would be to do the same style of book debates in our classroom. Students love a good battle. Come learn about how it went and how you can host your own book debates.

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Are You Still Wasting Time With Brain Breaks?

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Are brain breaks taking up too much time in your lessons and interrupting learning? You're probably using them incorrectly. Come read this post to help put the best practices for brain breaks into your classroom.

Do you find that brain breaks are disrupting your learning and working time? Do students seem more stimulated after a brain break? Is it difficult to get them calmed back down? Maybe you’ve been using brain breaks wrong? Stop wasting your learning time with brain breaks by managing them differently.

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