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Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

by BrainNinjasWP

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.

[Read more…] about Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Classroom Community, Confidence, Drama, Drama Circles, Expression, Listening Skills, Poetry and Drama, read aloud, Reading, Reading Activities, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reluctant readers, Teachers Pay Teachers, Teaching Reading

How to Differentiate Math Lessons

by BrainNinjasWP

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?

[Read more…] about How to Differentiate Math Lessons

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Differentiated Instruction, Differentiation, digital task cards, interactive math notebooks, Interactive Notebooks, Math, Math Lessons, math manipulatives, Math Worksheets, Mathematics, self-checking task cards, Small Groups, task cards

Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately?

by BrainNinjasWP

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?

[Read more…] about Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately?

Filed Under: Classroom Tips Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Differentiation, Makerspace, Makerspaces, Multiple Means of Engagement, Professional Learning, steam, stem

How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Art Lessons

by BrainNinjasWP

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.

[Read more…] about How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Art Lessons

Filed Under: Classroom Tips, Engaging Lessons Tagged With: Art, Art Class, Art Lessons, Drama Circles, Indigenous Artists, Indigenous Artists in Canada, Indigenous Cultures, Indigenous People in Canada, Professional Learning, Teachers Pay Teachers

Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

by BrainNinjasWP

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.

[Read more…] about Heart Art Projects You’ll Love

Filed Under: Engaging Lessons Tagged With: Art, Art Lessons, Crayons, Free Activities, Holidays and Seasonal, Markers, Pastels, Pink Shirt Day, Valentine's Day

You Got Your First Teaching Job…Now What?

by BrainNinjasWP

Congratulations! You got your first teaching job and are now an elementary school teacher. All that hard work has paid off and you are gainfully employed in your vocation (or calling or job to pay the bills-your choice). Now the real work begins. But don’t panic. We’ve been there! Read what you need to know to get your new job started off on the right foot.

Congratulations for getting yor first teaching job. Now the hard work begins. But where do you start? Don't worry. We've got a list of things you can do to get your school year started off right (and none of them involve teaching yet). Come have a read and put your mind at ease.
[Read more…] about You Got Your First Teaching Job…Now What?

Filed Under: Classroom Tips Tagged With: Back to School, new service teacher, new teacher, new teachers, Planning, Student Teachers, Teacher Stories, Teacher Wellness, Teacher Workload

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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.
    Five Easy Christmas Tree Projects for Leftover Bits and Pieces
    Rolled Christmas Wrapping Paper If you're like...
  • 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.
    40 Great Books for Inspiring a Growth Mindset
    Having a growth mindset means knowing...
  • 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!
    Scary Halloween Books for Your Classroom Library
    Whether you're creating a Halloween-themed classroom...

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