Ninja Notes

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BrainNinjasWP

Winter Art Projects That Will Warm Your Heart

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Check out these winter art projects that can be used in your elementary classroom. You don't need to be an art specialist to teach students to love art. We use painting, sculpting and printmaking to show off the best part of winter.

If you’re an elementary generalist, you probably have to teach your own art class. It can be tricky to find interesting art projects that don’t require a lot of special materials or skills. We have created a lot of different art projects over the years. Some of them have flopped. But, we’ve also come up with some favourites. Come read about some of the ways we help our students create beautiful works of art while teaching those valuable art outcomes through winter art projects.

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How to Teach Coding Without Knowing How to Code

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If you don't know how to code, but you are expected to teach coding, we've put together activities you can use without any experience.

It seems that teachers are expected to have a wealth of knowledge about everything under the sun. Even as the world changes, they keep adding the new learning to the old content so that students will benefit.

Coding is a vital skill and there are so many ways it enriches the classroom. However, many teachers feel completely inadequate to teach coding because they have never been taught to code.

That’s ok. Coding isn’t about knowing how to code. It’s about knowing how to problem solve and we already know that’s where teachers excel. Come learn some of the ways you can teach coding without being able to code.

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Make the Best of Your Natural Resources Lessons

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We have written resources to use to teach your students about natural resources. Students will learn how the resources are extracted, which are renewable and how they are used. Come take a look and get the lessons you need.

What do you think of when you think of natural resources? Forests? Oil and gas? Wind power? Teaching students about natural resources is easy when you have them examine all the objects around them. Humans rely on natural resources to make life easier. We use them to make shelter, provide energy and sustain our nutrition. Come learn about some of the lessons and activities we use to teach students about natural resources.

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Plotting on the Cartesian Plane During Math Class

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If you are looking for ways to teach the Cartesian plane, ordered pairs or coordinates in your elementary math class, come check out this post full of practical ideas.

The Cartesian plane was named after the mathematician René Descartes. This is now an outcome in the Alberta Mathematics Curriculum and somehow we made it through all our university math classes without needing that information.

The plane is a fundamental tool that can represent relationships between two variables. Most of that goes right over the heads of elementary students, but if you talk to them about the game Battleship, most realize they’ve already been using the Cartesian plane. Come learn how we teach the quadrants and coordinates.

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How to Teach Human Body Systems to Young Scientists

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If you are teaching human body systems to your elementary science students, we've got everything you need to get your unit planned in record time. Come check out these activities, lessons, books, videos and so much more. It's perfect for the new Alberta science curriculum outcomes.

Everyone needs to understand the basic systems that help keep humans alive. The Alberta science curriculum focuses on four main systems: circulatory (cardiovascular), musculoskeletal (bones and muscles), respiratory and digestive. There are many more systems, but this post will focus on teaching these four to your Grade 5 students. Come learn how we teach this unit from beginning to end.

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How to Teach Students About the Earth’s Spheres

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Are you looking for resources to teach students about the Earth's spheres? We wrote some lessons, found some books and videos and put it all together for you in one post. Come have a read and inspire your scientists.

The new Alberta science curriculum asks students in Grade 4 to learn about the Earth’s spheres and how they interact with each other. That meant we got the opportunity to learn about them, too. We pulled together some of the best resources we’ve used to learn about the spheres and the resources we’ve written to help our students.

When we talk about the Earth’s spheres, we refer to the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. We know there are more spheres, but these are the ones focused on in our science curriculum. Learning about the Earth’s spheres helps students understand how our planet survives and thrives.

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