Brain Ninjas

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Classroom Tips

What Goes in a Makerspace?

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Check out this great list of imakerspace supplies to fill your makerspace! Get creative and have some fun. The best part is that you probably already have so many things in our list. Come read it!

You’ve decided to have a makerspace because you understand the value of the learning that can take place. If you aren’t quite sure, maybe you should go back to our post: Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately? It talks about the reasons a makerspace can be valuable in your school or classroom.

What should you put in it? Anything you want. Start small. We put out origami paper and a book during the first week just to see what would happen. (Turns out the answer to that question is lots of paper frogs.) But seriously, we made a list of potential makerspace supplies.

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How to Create a Community Culture in Your Multi-Grade Classroom

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How do you teach a split class or combined grades? Start by combining your students into a culture where they get to know each other and create a classroom community that your students will love.

How do we create a community culture where all students feel they are equal and belong? It turns out we’ve had more combined-grade classes than straight-grade classes since we began teaching, so we can’t imagine teaching any other way. First of all, we call it a combined class rather than a split class. It’s the first thing we do with parents because our combined classes are not like the old ‘split’ classes.

When students come into our classroom on the first day of school, they immediately collect into two different groups-the lower grade and upper grade. They don’t know each other well and like to sit with their friends. We don’t give students a seating plan right away (or sometimes at all) so we can see which relationships form or are already in place, but then we slowly start changing their mindset about the combined class.

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Being Thankful in the Classroom

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Canadian Thanksgiving is early in he year, which is why we call the time from Back to School until thanksgiving the beta period. Come find out what we use it for and get loads of resources you can use to be thankful in the classroom or acknowledge Thanksgiving.

The year has started. Things are starting to settle and it’s time to count your blessings in the classroom. We call the start of the year through Thanksgiving (well, Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October) the beta period. It’s the time of year to try things out, get to know the students, build relationships, and set up the year for success. It can be hard to be thankful in the classroom unless we take a moment to sit back and list the things we are grateful for.

The beta period is not the time of year we spend getting deep into the content. We review. We read. And we talk about what is coming next. We check out our skills and show what we can or can’t do.

Most of all, we celebrate all the things were are thankful for in our classroom. Keep reading to see how we spend this special time of year.

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How to Create a Sense of Agency in the Classroom

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Are you struggling with classroom management? This strategy changed our entire approach. No charts, games or reward systems! Just classroom management that works! Come and read this post to make a change in your classroom today.

Imagine a classroom where the students monitored themselves-and, not in that “hall pass police officer” type of way. Imagine a classroom where students encouraged each other to keep the room tidy, put things away and treat each other with respect. We call this a sense of agency.

It’s possible because each year we turn out a classroom full of polite and respectful students, but it takes work. Students need to be taught how to make decisions that are positive and what to do when they make a mistake. Creating a sense of agency is just as important as all the math and reading skills. It’s the key to classroom management. Want to know how?

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Use the Learning Pit to Teach Growth Mindset

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Do your students struggle with giving up as soon as the work gets challenging? Do they lack determination or grit? This is one of the best lessons we ever learned and we regularly use it with our students to show them how to embrace a growth mindset. Come learn about the learning pit.

Have you been learning about growth mindset and wanting to try to instill some determination in your students? Have you heard of the learning pit? It might be the key to teaching students to learn how to learn.

Do you have students that break down during tasks that require a bit of problem-solving? Are they frustrated? Do they yell and scream or run out of the classroom? You need the learning pit.

Teaching students to overcome challenges can be difficult when we live in a society that is all about getting things done quickly. We have technology, parents and constant distractions constantly telling students they can learn anything anytime with little or no effort. As a teacher, this is very challenging when students feel they’ve failed, get frustrated or give up right away.

This was what was happening in our classroom. Students who could manage challenges were more successful overall because they kept working until they got it. It felt like it was a lack of effort, but it was much more than that. So we started investigating and researching best practices to help us teach students to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

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How to Save Your Sanity in the Classroom

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We teach our students some basic courtesies so that everyone in the classroom feels empowered, independent and responsible for our classroom together. Come check out how we do it.

Each year, we work hard to teach students some basic courtesies to make everyone happier and keep students responsible for their learning space. These are the basic things we teach repeatedly during the first month of school to our upper elementary students. Save your sanity by giving them a try.

We also want to stress that just because this is how we do things doesn’t mean these procedures will work ‘as is’ in your classroom. Feel free to solve the issues in your own way.

By teaching these courtesies, we reduce our own frustrations and the frustrations of students because they already know how to handle these situations.

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Here is Your Back to School Pep Talk

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It's back to school season and sometimes you need a good laugh to set the year off right. Come read through some of our favourite teacher stories and get your back to school pep talk.

It’s time to head back to school. There are two types of teachers in the world. There are the ones who cannot wait to get back into the classroom and spend their whole summer break planning and prepping. And they’re the ones who squeeze every last drop of summer out before heading back.

It doesn’t matter which one you are. You can even be a little of both. Loving your students and your free time doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. You are allowed to have mixed emotions.

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How to Build Relationships With Students

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Are you struggling with classroom management? Take the time to build relationships with your students. It is is just one way to help develop your classroom management strategies. Get some easy ideas to get you started.

Taking time from teaching to get to know your students is worth every second. Although typically you want to spend the first month of school working on building relationships with students, it’s never too late. It is hard to teach students when you don’t know them. It is challenging for students to take risks when they don’t know you. When students feel connected they will give you their best.

Not sure where to start? 

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What You Should Do On Break Before Back to School

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Are you looking for some ways to enjoy your break from teaching? Try out some of these so you are refreshed and ready for back to school.

Teachers are notorious for never really taking a break. We’re super teachers! We never need sleep or downtime or family. Somehow we feel guilty if we don’t spend our whole summers getting ready for the new school year. If that sounds like you and you’re a teacher on break, then this post is for you.

It’s true-we could spend every waking moment working on our classrooms or planning amazing lessons for our students. Should we feel guilty for not spending every weekend slaving over marking or making resources?

Absolutely not. After all these years of teaching, we’ve managed to figure out that it will still work out whether we spend a thousand hours or three. Summer is a well-deserved break. It’s time to rethink the teacher on break mentality.

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Ten Ways to Procrastinate Right Now

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There’s always so much to do. Before the pandemic, I always thought that I didn’t get things done because I didn’t have enough time. Well, that turned out to be completely untrue because when you’re locked in your house for months on end with nothing to do, these things still don’t get done. I’ve been lying to myself. There are so many ways to procrastinate.

You’re probably lying to yourself too, because you’re here reading this post instead of doing whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.

But why are you procrastinating, and how should you go about doing it?

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How to be a Great Teaching Teammate

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Sometimes co-teaching or team teaching can be a challenge. We've managed to build a friendship and great working relationship after we were asked to share a classroom. Come learn about how to be a great teaching teammate and make the most of your partnership.

Are you someone people like to work with? Or not? It’s too easy to blame others when we aren’t happy in a situation.

We’ve been in the teaching game long enough to know there are certain people we avoid getting stuck on committees with. We know it will be stressful and someone always ends up rage eating.

We will be the first to admit that we have been all the things we’re about to tell you, so take our advice with a grain of salt (on the rim of a margarita is recommended). No one is the perfect teaching teammate. It’s all about reciprocation.

What?!?

It’s about the give and take.

Like I will give you a margarita or I will take that margarita. Wouldn’t that be nice, but…

When things are too much give or too much take, everything falls apart. So, whether you mostly give or you mostly take, it’s time to balance things out to be a teaching teammate.

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How to Create Your Dream Home Office

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Do you take your teaching work home? Is your home office the dining room table or do you have a room? Here are some things for you to consider. Come read the post.

When you work from home, do you have an actual office or are you like so many teachers piling things high on the dining room table or the living couch?

That strategy works, but after a while it can take a toll. We all need a safe, reliable space to work in, but that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank.

Here are some things to consider when designing your own home office.

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