Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

BrainNinjasWP

Everything You Need to Know About Flexible Seating

by

Flexible seating is not about buying lots of different seating options. It's about teaching students how to regulate their emotions and learn how they work best. Come learn how we implement flexible seating in our classroom.

Do you want to try flexible seating in your classroom but you aren’t sure where to start? Maybe it’s not the right fit for your classroom management style. Let us walk you through how to start alternative seating options in your classroom so you can decide for yourself if it’s the right fit for you.

Hint hint! It’s not right for everyone.

Our goal is not to convince you to try flexible seating, but instead give you a realistic idea of how flexible seating can be a benefit to your students, problems you’ll encounter and what you should think about before you go buying yourself flexible seating furniture.

[Read more…] about Everything You Need to Know About Flexible Seating

How to Teach Students to Self-Assess

by

Do your students need to learn how to reflect on their work accurately? Do they miss big parts of a task or need your help to figure out what is left to do? Come teach your students how to self-assess so you can free up your time with this great lesson and free bulletin board set.

How often do your students tell you they are all done with their work or assignment and the second you look at it, you notice they’ve missed a huge part of the task? Teaching your students to self-reflect accurately is very challenging because students are usually unrealistic. They are either too hard on themselves or clueless about how little they’ve done.

[Read more…] about How to Teach Students to Self-Assess

Practical Strategies for Reluctant Readers

by

Do you have students who avoid reading? Check out these step-by-step effective strategies for reluctant readers so you can get all of your students to enjoy reading.

Do you have students in your classroom you would label as reluctant readers? A reluctant reader is usually considered to be a person who doesn’t read for pleasure, but we’re about to debunk that myth and help you out in your classroom by giving you strategies to engage reluctant readers in ways you didn’t even know you needed.

[Read more…] about Practical Strategies for Reluctant Readers

10 Engaging Weather Lessons All in One Place

by

Are you looking for weather experiments and lessons that you can use in your upper elementary classroom without much prep? We've got you covered with lots of ideas, resources and lesson plans already planned for you. Come take a look!

Are you tired of wasting your valuable time searching high and low for the weather lessons you need for your upper elementary students? There are so many weather activities all over Pinterest, but we find most of the weather lessons are for preschoolers- not exactly what our students need.

We focus on creating materials for teachers who teach the same things to the same age we do. Most of what we create comes from not being able to find what we need. Weather worksheets are just plain boring and not at all aligned with our teaching style, so we’ve created weather experiments and activities that we use in our classroom. We want to help you by putting everything in one place so you don’t have to use all your time collecting lessons from all over the place.

[Read more…] about 10 Engaging Weather Lessons All in One Place

What is Concept Based Instruction?

by

Concept Based Instruction? Is this just a new fad? Hoping it will pass and nothing will change? This is the new direction in education and we believe is here to stay even if it isn’t mandated. It just makes sense! It took us awhile to wrap our heads around what this looks like in a classroom…practically. And we are still learning! Here is what we’ve learned so far.

What is it?
Concept based instruction focuses on using content (topics, facts, and skills) to uncover the actual learning concept and the relationship between different concepts. It is multi-dimensional and looks at what students need to know, understand and do. The learning of overarching concepts helps students to transfer the learning to new situations. The goal is to get students to think at higher levels, to have students move from just learning facts to being able to make generalizations that apply to new learning. Familiar with Understanding by Design? Planning concept based instruction parallels backwards design. Familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy? Concept based instruction includes different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

What does “concept” mean?
A concept refers to a big idea that students must understand and not just know and do. It is abstract, timeless and universal. For example, a traditional unit of study might include the study of the War of 1812, or World War I or World War II.  Using a concept based approach, the concept could be: power, technology, conflict or identity (among other possibilities).  If identity was the chosen concept then the big idea could be framed as:  War can shape the way a country thinks about itself and the way other people perceive it. If technology was the chosen concept then the big idea could be framed as: Technology can change the outcomes of war over time. In both of these examples the War of 1812, World War I and World War II are used as ‘case studies’ to exemplify the chosen concept.

This post just barely scratches the surface but gets us thinking about the idea of concept based instruction. We will be exploring the different aspects of concept based teaching in a series of short posts. What do you already know about concept based instruction? What are you hoping to learn? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Love the Ninjas

Books About Kindness That Should Be in Every Classroom

by

This is a great list of kindness books you can use in your classroom (even an upper elementary classroom) all year round. Use them for Pink Shirt Day, World Kindness Day or to foster a kind environment for all your students.

We love picture books and use them all the time in our classroom as mentor texts or to illustrate a writer’s craft. We love books that highlight kindness and use them all year with our students. We’re always on the search for new books, but here are some of the best kindness books we’ve found and use all year.

[Read more…] about Books About Kindness That Should Be in Every Classroom