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How do you bring nature into your classroom? Or how do you bring your classroom to nature? More and more research shows the benefits of nature to student health and achievement (and yours, too!). Where should you start? We’ve put together a list of things you can do to help connect with nature to create a healthy classroom. Hint hint-they don’t cost money.
[Read more…] about How to Grow a Healthy Classroom with Plants
Every year in May we celebrate Asian Heritage Month. It started in the United States in the 1990s but eventually, it made its way to Canada. We recognize the history and value of Asian Canadians across the country. Asian Canadians strengthen Canadian society, whether they have been here for years or have newly arrived.
Explore Asian Heritage Month in Canada with us.
[Read more…] about How to Celebrate Asian Heritage Month in Canada
If you’ve ever thought your history lessons were boring, then truthfully, you had the wrong teacher. Teaching history can be exciting and interesting.
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.
[Read more…] about How to Take Your History Lessons Off Life Support
We believe firmly in social-emotional learning (or SEL), self-regulation and teaching students about feelings. Students today struggle with identifying feelings, managing their emotions and staying focused.
Let’s not get into all the causes of why some students are unable to describe and manage their feelings, but more and more instructional time becomes wasted unless we intentionally teach students about to self-regulate.
[Read more…] about The Secrets of Social Emotional Learning for Kids
We rarely use worksheets because they don’t align with our teaching style. We tend to use a lot of project-based learning or inquiry process activities, but every so often we find that our students need a little extra practice with computation in math. That is when we bring out the worksheets.
However, we don’t often just hand them out and expect our students to fill them in. Here are some ways we use a math worksheet in a less-than-traditional way.
[Read more…] about Math Worksheet Games Your Students Will Love
Every day in our classroom is Earth Day. It’s part of our science lessons to learn about energy conservation, so it’s easy to make sure we talk about the importance of conservation regularly.
One year a fellow teacher thought it would be a great idea to print a little paper globe for each student in our school (that’s several hundred) and write a “thank you to the Earth” type sentence.
I don’t often speak up at meetings, but I couldn’t resist this one. Isn’t it counterproductive to teach students about conservation by wasting all that paper?
Everyone agreed, but NO ONE had any suggestions on what we could do instead. And that’s how we came up with this list of Earth Day activities (and why you should try some of them).
[Read more…] about Easy to Use Classroom Activities for Earth Day
