Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

BrainNinjasWP

Quiet Classroom Games You’ll Love

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Do you need a quick and quiet classroom game? We've put together some of our favourite games that are perfect to give you a break, use up a little time or have some fun. Come read through this list and keep it handy.

Every once in a while, you need a few minutes to regroup, handle a student issue, clean up a disaster, or smooth out a transition. There will be moments in your teaching day where the lessons don’t line up, or you’re waiting on someone else.

Everyone knows silent ball. It’s a quiet game where students toss an object around the room to each other but cannot make any noise while doing it. Our students have loved silent ball over the years, but we like to mix things up with a variety of activities that will keep students engaged.

We’ve collected some of our favourite calm and quiet activities that you can use almost anywhere and almost anytime. Keep this list of quiet classroom games handy (and maybe even learn a few to take with you on that next field trip).

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Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

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Are you missing out on the benefits of using drama circles in your upper elementary classroom? Come learn how to use them to help with listening skills, reading abilities and for the fun of it.

Before learning about drama circles, we weren’t sure how we could incorporate drama into our classroom in a meaningful way that didn’t take away from all the work we needed to do. Putting on a play just didn’t seem like a good use of our learning time, but we knew our students enjoyed acting. That is when we considered some of the benefits of drama circles in our upper elementary classroom.

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How to Differentiate Math Lessons

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What is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons? Come learn some of the ways we streamlin differentiation in our upper elementary classroom.

Differentiated instruction is expected of most classroom teachers these days. Long gone are the times when one worksheet could be given to every member of the class and they would all work on that page until every question was done correctly. Since the pandemic began, the once manageable (pause for laughter here) learning gaps between students have gotten even worse. So what is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons?

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Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately?

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Makerspaces give your students the change to be creative, solve problems and learn in new ways. They add to your STEM, STEAM, science or art lessons too. Still not sure why you should have a makerspace? Check out this post!

Makerspaces. They seem to be all the buzz, but the concept that drives them isn’t new. For many years, we’ve been focused on directing every moment of our students’ lives. As parents, the lives of children are scheduled to the point they never have a moment to decide for themselves what to do. As teachers, if our students don’t look like they’re working, we worry that someone will think they aren’t learning. So when did we decide as adults that play is a bad thing?

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How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Art Lessons

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One way to show appreciation for Indigenous artists is to study their work as you would any great artist. We put together some of the ways we incorporate learning about Indigenous artists and other aspects of culture in Canada in one post. Come read more.

Incorporating the stories and culture of Indigenous people is important to us. It’s woven throughout our subject areas, but we often look for other places to provide opportunities to bring cultures together. We’ve had several students who share their Cree and Dene cultures with us. Other years we’ve had no one in our classroom with a direct connection to our Indigenous People. We want all of our students to feel connected to the history of our country and the people who were here first. One way we do this is by exploring the works of Indigenous artists in Canada.

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Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

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Heart art projects are great any time of year. We collected some of our favourite art projects that use basic materials like markers, pastels and crayons and put all the instructions in one blog post. Come see which one you can make with your upper elementary class for Valentine's Day, Pink Shirt Day or just to show how kind your students can be.

We love to create art projects that use simple shapes but teach students different techniques. Heart art projects are perfect around Valentine’s Day, but they are a universal symbol that can be done any time of year. These art projects are some of the favourites that we use year after year. Best of all, they mostly use common materials you can find in most schools.

Check out these heart art projects that you can use to decorate your classroom, make gifts or share the love.

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