Engaging Lessons

Setting Up Your Weekly Reading Comprehension Schedule

If you use our weekly reading comprehension sets (or maybe you want to learn more), come see how we schedule the first month and get some ideas for how you can use these reading and grammar activities in your classroom whether your instruction happens in the classroom or online.

If you are struggling with reading instruction in your classroom, you’re not alone. Upper elementary teachers are often not trained in how to teach students to read, despite the fact all the students in their classroom are unlikely to be reading at grade level.

We designed our Weekly Reading Comprehension Skills specifically for our students. We needed reading material for science and social studies that was at the right reading level and needed to teach grammar and reading skills. You might want to read this post about how we came up with them: Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons.

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Add Great Content to Your Literacy Lessons

by BrainNinjasWP 1 Comment

There are so many things to teach and just not enough time for it all. We started using content from science and social studies to teach grammar and reading comprehension. Game changer! Come find out what we did and how we did it in our upper elementary classroom (even during distance teaching).

It took fifteen years of teaching and professional development before we felt confident in teaching reading to students in upper elementary. Teaching reading is one of the most important skills any teacher is responsible for, but it is often taught by stabbing at strategies until something works-only to find it doesn’t work for the next student.

The most important thing we’ve learned is that reading comprehension skills are also skills related to grammar, word parts, word families and patterns, and writing. The same skills are used in a variety of ways.

If a student missed one of these skills, they trip over it in everything else.

By the time students get to the end of Grade Three, if they aren’t reading at grade level, they are unlikely to catch up. So, what is a teacher to do?

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Boom Goes Our Learning

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Are you wondering what all the fuss is about with Boom Cards? Come learn what they are all about and how they compare to Google Forms.

We have always thought of ourselves as being pretty technically savy, but when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and teachers all around the world were thrust into teaching from a distance, we realized how little we actually knew.

The first thing we did was going through our library of resources that we have in our store and realized that some of them just don’t translate well into digital resources. Some things are just better in person.

This meant we needed to look at new ways to reach our students. We’ve always used Google Classroom and feel pretty comfortable using it with our students, but it lacks the ability to have students practice skills in a way that can checked. We love task cards, but with distance learning they just aren’t the same.

We asked around to see what some of our friends or fellow creators were using and we kept hearing about Boom Learning.

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How to Grow a Healthy Classroom

by BrainNinjasWP 1 Comment

There are lots of studies that support the human connection with nature. How are you connecting your students to nature? This is a list of ideas that can help you grow a healthy classroom by bringing nature in and your students out into the fresh air.

How do you bring nature into your classroom? Or how do you bring your classroom to nature? Do you? More and more research shows the benefits of nature to student health and achievement (and yours, too!). Where should you start? Well, we’ve put together a list of things you can do to help connect with nature (and hint hint-they don’t cost any money).

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Take a Peek into Asian Heritage Month in Canada

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What does Asian Heritage Month look like in Canada? What are some of the contributions made by Asian Canadians. Come find out!

What is Asian Heritage Month?

Every year in May we celebrate Asian Heritage Month. The celebration started in the United States in the 1990s but eventually, unofficially, made its way to Canada. During the month we acknowledge the history and contributions of Asian Canadians across the country. Whether they have been here for generations or are newly arrived, Asian Canadians strengthen Canadian society.

Come explore Asian Heritage Month in Canada with us.

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How to Take Your History Lessons Off Life Support

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If your history lessons are dropping flat we have just what you need to take your history lessons off life support. Get strategies you can use for any history lesson.

If you’ve ever thought your history lessons were boring, then truthfully, you had the wrong teacher.

My love of Canadian history came from my favourite teacher of all time, Mr. Perrin. He was a tough teacher who expected the best from everyone, but he had a way of bringing history alive. You felt like you were in the trenches of World War 1 or at the table of a family living through The Great Depression. I underestimated the impact this love of history would have on my life.

Each time I step into my classroom and stand up in front of my students to tell them about some historic event, I still see Mr. Perrin jumping from side to side role-playing both the French and the Germans in battle. This love of history was so apparent I can’t help but pass this enthusiasm along to my students.

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Engaging Lessons

What is Asian Heritage Month?

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