Brain Ninjas

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Engaging Lessons

Five Simple and Stunning Remembrance Day Art Projects

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Check out these Remembrance Day art projects that feature poppies. This project features pastel or markers drawings of the corners of poppies.

Special occasions are a great time to bring out your favourite art projects. Remembrance Day is no exception. We teach in a general classroom, which means we’re responsible for art lessons all year long. While we like to teach specific skills with different projects, sometimes you have to have art projects around a specific theme for hallway decorating or assemblies.

Remembrance Day is one of those occasions when you don’t have a lot of time for art because you’re just starting to get deep into your lessons, and report cards are just around the corner. That’s why we’ve come up with some simple but stunning projects you can do with your students.

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It’s Time to Get Your Emergency Sub Plans Ready

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Are you prepared for a substitute teacher in the event you have to leave your classroom unexpectedly? Get these tips and some templates to make your planning simpler, faster and FINISHED!

Writing emergency sub plans for a supply teacher is a big pain in the butt. Even more so, when some sort of family emergency comes up and you’re still legally responsible for two days of classes (or more depending on where you teach).

It’s strange that these certified teachers who come into our classroom don’t have to plan anything for two full days. At least, that is the rule in the province where we live. Teachers are responsible for leaving two full days of plans for their students regardless of the situation. This must be in the only job in the world where you do just as much work on the days you aren’t there as on the days you are.

I once wrote sub plans on my phone from a hospital bed. True story. And as crazy as that was, I learned a valuable lesson from it.

Emergency Sub Plans!

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How to Teach Students to Self-Assess

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Do your students need to learn how to reflect on their work accurately? Do they miss big parts of a task or need your help to figure out what is left to do? Come teach your students how to self-assess so you can free up your time with this great lesson and free bulletin board set.

How often do your students tell you they are all done with their work or assignment and the second you look at it, you notice they’ve missed a huge part of the task? Teaching your students to self-reflect accurately is very challenging because students are usually unrealistic. They are either too hard on themselves or clueless about how little they’ve done.

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10 Engaging Weather Lessons All in One Place

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Are you looking for weather experiments and lessons that you can use in your upper elementary classroom without much prep? We've got you covered with lots of ideas, resources and lesson plans already planned for you. Come take a look!

Are you tired of wasting your valuable time searching high and low for the weather lessons you need for your upper elementary students? There are so many weather activities all over Pinterest, but we find most of the weather lessons are for preschoolers- not exactly what our students need.

We focus on creating materials for teachers who teach the same things to the same age we do. Most of what we create comes from not being able to find what we need. Weather worksheets are just plain boring and not at all aligned with our teaching style, so we’ve created weather experiments and activities that we use in our classroom. We want to help you by putting everything in one place so you don’t have to use all your time collecting lessons from all over the place.

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Ways to Teach Drama in the Classroom

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Drama has many uses in the classroom. It promotes reading, fluency, expression and can help with confidence and public speaking. Come learn some of the ways you can use drama in your classroom.

Students love role-playing and dramatic play, but many find the pressure of a performance overwhelming. Add some drama to your classroom by using drama circles, role-playing and storytelling in a low-risk environment.

Read on to find out all the reasons you should add some drama to your classroom and ways you can add a little bit every day.

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Disguise Research Skills as a Scavenger Hunt

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Give your students meaningful practice doing research by completing scavenger hunts. They're fun and serve a purpose. Come find out how we use them in our classroom.

Sometimes students don’t understand how time is of the essence when doing research. They lack the research skills to use text features, skim materials, and find items quickly. Not only does this slow down their work, it often results in incomplete research and general frustration.

It is a struggle year after year.

However, we have managed to find some activities that help students refine their research skills: scavenger hunts. It turns out that making research fun and game-like can have a positive impact on how students complete research.

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