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Must Know Tech Skills You Should Teach Your Students

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Can your students troubleshoot basic tech skills? Do you spend all your teaching time fixing tech issues? Come learn some of the basic tech skills we teach our students to save time when you have to use technology. This is perfect for elementary classrooms but we know lots of adults that can also use these skills.

Working in a school has taught us that many adults do not have basic technology skills. We still receive responses as “reply all” or emails without attachments. Since we are often asked to help out with technology, we are often the teachers asked to fix a problem when a student shows up at our door with a device question. This helped us identify the must-know tech skills every student should have.

We changed how we taught technology in our own classroom. Gone are the days where we teach students how to simply use a specific program. This wasn’t helpful because things change so frequently. Tech companies love to move stuff around just to keep things “fresh.” To counter this, we started teaching students that most programs use the same symbols and features to do similar things. We taught students how all programs function in general and how to troubleshoot. Teaching these must know tech skills made all the difference.

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30 Free Ways to Reward Students

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If you are looking for some free classroom rewards that you can use for extrinsic motiviation, this is the list for you. Come check out these classroom rewards that you can use without it costing any money.

While not all students are motivated by rewards, many are. But, either way, rewarding students shouldn’t cost you a fortune. In fact, we’ve found that students will often perform better and feel more rewarded with simple and free rewards. Are you looking for ways to reward your students without breaking the bank? Here are 30 free ideas to motivate and reward your students.

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How to Teach the Scientific Method in Your Elementary Classroom

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Teach your elementary aged scientists the scientific method while teaching safety and procedures during experiments. Come get this free scientific method lesson.

The scientific method has been around for thousands of years and if you went to school, you learned about it, too. The method helps keep experiments and investigations fair so they can be repeated and results can be verified. All scientists use this method which helps verify results.

When you are teaching science, it is important that students understand the method-even if they cannot remember all the names of the steps. It more important that students get to work hands-on and focus on curiosity than following and writing out a set of steps.

Come learn how we teach students about the scientific method in our science class.

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Sweet and Simple Two-Colour Watercolour Candy Cane Paintings

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We like to try teaching our students new watercolour techniques that will make their paintings more realistic. Being elememtary generalists means we're not experts but we've broken down this watercolour candy cane lesson so you can try it out with your students. It's a great Christmas art project, but more importantly you can teach students how to add light and shadow to their art projects to make them come alive.

We love to teach students new simple techniques for painting with watercolour. We created this Christmas art project that only uses two colours as a way to practice a technique where students remove paint from their page. This watercolour candy cane painting teaches students techniques like adding light and shadows.

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Five Easy Christmas Tree Projects for Leftover Bits and Pieces

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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.
Rolled Christmas Wrapping Paper

If you’re like us (and most teachers), you likely have lots of bits and pieces left over from previous projects. We often have to buy a class set of things and always have one or two left over. The good news is that we have some projects that can use some of that up and still create awesome Christmas tree projects for your art class. Have your students gift them to their families. Come check out these Christmas tree projects.

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40 Great Books for Inspiring a Growth Mindset

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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.

Having a growth mindset means knowing how to rebound after a failure or not giving up when learning something new. Children are incredibly resilient, but developing a growth mindset needs to be taught. Many students have a fear of failure, and many parents today prevent their children from experiencing it. Learning to fail is a healthy skill that will serve a child throughout their life. Come learn some of the activities and books we use to help students learn to have a growth mindset.

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