Brain Ninjas

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Brain Ninjas

Books You’ll Love With LGBTQ+ Characters

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There are so many great characters in so many books these days and some of them feature characters from the LGBTQ+ community. Come see if your favourite book made the list.

We teach grades four and five, which is a time in a student’s life when they are just figuring out who they are and how they want the world to see them. It’s a special time for students and we like to have books in our classroom that represent everyone regardless of culture, colour, religion, gender, identity or orientation. LGTBQ+ characters are included in the books, lessons and discussions our students see in our classroom.

Students need to see people of all backgrounds.

One way we do this is through books. Our classroom and school libraries are filled with books that feature characters from all backgrounds including members of the LGBTQ+ community.

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How to Take Your History Lessons Off Life Support

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If your history lessons are dropping flat we have just what you need to take your history lessons off life support. Get strategies you can use for any history lesson in your upper elementary classroom.

If you’ve ever thought your history lessons were boring, then truthfully, you had the wrong teacher. Teaching history can be exciting and interesting.

My love of Canadian history came from my favourite teacher of all time, Mr. Perrin. He was a tough teacher who expected the best from everyone, but he had a way of bringing history alive. You felt like you were in the trenches of World War 1 or at the table of a family living through The Great Depression. I underestimated the impact this love of history would have on my life.

Each time I step into my classroom and stand up in front of my students to tell them about some historic event, I still see Mr. Perrin jumping from side to side, role-playing both the French and the Germans in battle. This love of history was so apparent I can’t help but pass this enthusiasm along to my students.

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The Secrets of Social Emotional Learning for Kids

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Do your students have difficulty regulating their emotions? Do you need strategies to help teach students about feelings and how to calm down? This is the post for you. Come read the whole post and get practical strategies you can implement today.

We believe firmly in social-emotional learning (or SEL), self-regulation and teaching students about feelings. Students today struggle with identifying feelings, managing their emotions and staying focused.

Let’s not get into all the causes of why some students are unable to describe and manage their feelings, but more and more instructional time becomes wasted unless we intentionally teach students about to self-regulate.

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Math Worksheet Games Your Students Will Love

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There are lots of different ways to use a math worksheet to help students learn to collaborate, reinforce skills, and deepen their understanding. Check out these activities that you can set up and use in minutes with the worksheets you already have printed. Save your time with these engaging activities.

We rarely use worksheets because they don’t align with our teaching style. We tend to use a lot of project-based learning or inquiry process activities, but every so often we find that our students need a little extra practice with computation in math. That is when we bring out the worksheets.

However, we don’t often just hand them out and expect our students to fill them in. Here are some ways we use a math worksheet in a less-than-traditional way.

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Five Types of Teachers and How To Deal With Them

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One of the most difficult things about teaching is how it can be isolating from one moment to exasperating the next. Dealing with coworkers can be a real challenge. Come read about the different types of teachers and how to deal with them.

Disclaimer: This article is meant for fun. We are not actually criticising anyone or their work ethic, but let’s be honest, we all know these types of teachers. Keep reading for our advice on how to handle it.  

Think about the last staff meeting you attended. It’s time to pass around the volunteer sign-up because it’s going to be a busy month. That’s always the intention, but by the end of the month there are usually a lot of hard feelings and regret over glitter, balloons, and most of all missed class time (because everyone needs to sit around and listen to first graders read their research reports on goats for 45 minutes. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?)

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Easy to Use Classroom Activities for Earth Day

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Are you looking for activities to do with your upper elementary class? We pulled together Earth Day themed lessons and activities (but they can be used any time of year) for your upper elementary classroom. Come check out the resources, books, and ideas to use right away.

Every day in our classroom is Earth Day. It’s part of our science lessons to learn about energy conservation, so it’s easy to make sure we talk about the importance of conservation regularly.

One year a fellow teacher thought it would be a great idea to print a little paper globe for each student in our school (that’s several hundred) and write a “thank you to the Earth” type sentence.

I don’t often speak up at meetings, but I couldn’t resist this one. Isn’t it counterproductive to teach students about conservation by wasting all that paper?

Everyone agreed, but NO ONE had any suggestions on what we could do instead. And that’s how we came up with this list of Earth Day activities (and why you should try some of them).

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