Brain Ninjas

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Engaging Lessons

How to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day

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Are you looking for ways to celebrate a love of poetry with your upper elementary students? Try taking part in Poem in Your Pocket Day as part of National Poetry Month. This can be done any time of year and is a great activity to explore poetry throughout your school. Come read the whole post to get ideas how you can celebrate poetry.

We’re hosting a “Poem in Your Pocket” day as a celebration of completing our poetry unit in Language Arts. It coincides with the National Poem In Your Pocket Day held each year in April. It’s coming up soon! You can join us this year even if you haven’t taught poetry in your classroom yet!

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How to Teach Multiple Perspectives in the Classroom

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How do you teach controversial or challenging issues in your classroom? We try to teach students about multiple perspectives so they can learn to proper research and debate issues that are important to them. This is even more important in the age of fake news. Come check out these activities you can do in your upper elementary classroom to teach students to investigate multiple perspectives.

The Canadian news is flooded with discussions about pipelines and where they should or shouldn’t be built. So, how do we address the multiple perspectives of different issues in the classrooms? It’s important to be impartial while presenting all the facts from both sides of the issue.

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How to Work Through the Design Process

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The design process is useful for working through a problem. We use it in science and in our makerspace. Come learn about the process and get some design thinking posters for your classroom.

Here’s a quick lesson you can do with your students to learn how to use your Makerspace while teaching students to enjoy the process of solving problems. Problem-solving is a skill that needs to be taught, learned, and practiced. The design process uses simple steps to help alleviate frustration between creating, testing and refining. When all of your students have a common language, it can help facilitate conversations between them. Come learn how we use the design process in our classroom.

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How to Create Back to School Power Words

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Try this quick activity that will last all year. We use power words instead of making goals. We talk about growth mindset and words that help us be our best. Then we make a display to share our words. This makes a great back to school activity or works perfect in the New Year. Come take a look!

Do your students write goals? It can be an effective way to have students learn to take responsibility for their behaviour or learning. We tried something new this year. Students chose power words instead of goals.

Back to school is a great time to reflect on past years in school. It’s the right time to think about the positive changes you and your students can make. This will help you all have a wonderful year together.

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How to Make Recycled Cork Ornaments

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Recycle some of those corks or small round containers to make some adorable Christmas ornaments. This makes a great Christmas craft for the classroom or homeschool. Come get all the instructions and suggestions to make your own.

Do you have a bunch of wine corks lying around? Don’t worry; we’re not judging. Well, they can make great ornaments with a little paint and detail. Recycling materials to make Christmas ornaments is a great way to use materials destined for the landfill in a way that won’t just become a piece of garbage because the family will treasure the ornament for years. We created these little recycled cork ornaments that families love.

These recycled cork ornaments make great Christmas gifts for your students’ families. Wrap them up with some tissue paper and make a card that students can take home with them before the break.

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How to Create Fingerprint Art Projects

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Create adorable ornaments that use simple materials. These Christmas ornaments can be shared with friends and family. You can even use them for other times of the year like Halloween or winter.

Are you looking for a quick and not-too-messy project for any age? Well, look no further than fingerprint art.

Using a little paint, construction paper and markers, your students can transform their fingerprints into different art projects with lots of engagement and very little time or clean up.

Even though this post focuses on using fingerprint art for Christmas, there are lots of ways you can use this type of art.

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