Ninja Notes

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Engaging Lessons

Easy to Use Remembrance Day Assembly Ideas

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If you are looking for ideas to organize a Remembrance Day assembly in your school, check out this post full of ideas.

Every school across Canada has held a Remembrance Day assembly since the end of the Second World War. In fact, it is written into the School Act in Alberta as a requirement. Schools must have a Remembrance Day assembly on the day closest to November 11. We’ve got some Remembrance Day assembly ideas for you.

We had to make some changes during the pandemic. These ideas can work whether you’re able to gather together or need to be apart or learning online.

We’ve been rethinking how we’ll honour our soldiers at school. If you are planning a Remembrance Day assembly, we might have a few ideas for you.

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How to Set Up Your Reading Comprehension Schedule

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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. Setting up a reading comprehension schedule is one way to get on track.

We designed our Weekly Reading Comprehension Skills specifically for our students. We needed reading material for science and social studies that were 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

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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 literacy lessons (even during distance teaching).

It took fifteen years of teaching and professional development before we felt confident teaching reading to students in upper elementary. 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. Literacy lessons were hard to design and we didn’t really know where to start.

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

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How to Grow a Healthy Classroom with Plants

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Are you looking for ways to bring plants into your class? You can include them in science, but you can also reap the benefits of nature in the classroom. Come take a look to see how you can grow a healthy classroom.

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.

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How to Celebrate Asian Heritage Month in Canada

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How will you be acknowledging Asian Heritage Month in Canada? We pulled together resources that you can use in your upper elementary classroom to learn about the contributions of Asian-Canadians throughout history. Come read the whole post.

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.

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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 in your upper elementary classroom.

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.

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