Ninja Notes

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Engaging Lessons

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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How to Teach Students to Measure Area

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Teaching your students to calculate area can be a challenge, but we've pulled together great ideas to help introduce, practice, review and assess how students measure area.

The biggest mistake students often make when they measure area is that they aren’t quite sure what they are supposed to be measuring. Generally, the area is the amount of space inside a two-dimensional shape. We try to teach students math using plenty of hands-on activities. Come read about the ways we measure area in our upper elementary math class.

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Teach Your Students How to Create Line Plots

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Teaching line plots can be challenging, but we've got some tried and true methods to teach dot plots (or line plots) to your students when you are introducing graphing or reviewing. Come take a look.

Most students feel comfortable making a bar graph, but line plots (or dot plots) can be difficult for some students. It is important to understand line plots so you can teach your students to master them. Come learn how we introduce and teach dot plots to our students as part of our graphing and statistics lessons.

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Inspiring Ways to Celebrate the Festival du Voyageur

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If you are looking for ways to celebrate the Festival du voyageur at your school, check out this list of ideas. It's a great way to teach French culture in your French, FSL or Core French classes.

Each year, we organize a Festival du Voyageur for students learning French in our school. Over the years, we’ve learned some tips to make the planning easier because there’s already enough to do in February. Come check out these activities and see which ones the French learners in your school might enjoy.

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Dig Up Dinosaurs in Alberta With These Amazing Activities

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Whether you are teaching students about the different dinosaurs that lived in Alberta, how fossil fuels are created or how they died, these lessons and activities are designed for your elementary science class and only take moments to prep. Come take a look!

Most children go through a phase fascinated by dinosaurs. It only fits that living in Alberta means digging up dinosaurs and learning about fossil fuels. While learning about the specific dinosaurs is not in school curriculums, the result of their extinction is part of our lives today. Come learn about some of the ways we bring dinosaurs into our elementary science lessons. We’ve updated our lessons for the new Alberta science curriculum, but they work for any teacher wanted to roar through science (see what we did there?).

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