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Teaching Strategies

The Cumulative Project: How to Teach More With Less

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Come find projects to use in your Grade 3-6 class and get a free project to use in social studies.

Here’s something nobody tells you about cumulative projects: they’re one of the best-kept time-management secrets in teaching.

Most teachers we know are running on fumes by mid-year. You’re teaching five different things at once, managing behaviour, writing report cards, and trying to stay on pace with curriculum. The idea of adding a “big project” to that sounds like adding another log to an already-burning fire.

But what if we told you a well-designed cumulative project could reduce your workload while actually increasing what students learn? We know that sounds like teacher-blog fantasy. But we’ve seen it work. We’ve lived it. And we want to walk you through exactly how to teach more with less.

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How to Make Patterns and Algebra Stick With Interactive Notebooks

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Using this patterns and algebra interactive notebooks unit changed how I teach math as much as how students learned and understood it.

You’ve taught patterns before. You know the routine. You explain repeating patterns, growing patterns, equations with variables, and your students nod along. But then you ask them to work independently, and something’s missing. They don’t remember what you just showed them. They can’t visualize the concept when it’s on paper. And when you ask them to explain their thinking, they’re stuck.

Here’s the thing about patterns and algebra in elementary: it’s abstract. Variables are abstract. Pattern rules are abstract. Equations are abstract. Our students struggle with abstract. What they need is something concrete, something visual, something they can hold onto and reference whenever they’re confused.

But we figured out the game-changer.

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How Projects Can Transform Your Social Studies Lessons

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Using projects in your social studies classroom is a great way to boost engagement. Check out cumulative project-based learning and how it can work for you.

If you’re like most teachers we chat with, you’ve probably noticed something: students retain information better when they actually create something with it.

The new Alberta social studies curriculum is…dry. It’s mostly just facts that are expected to memeorized, But this gives us an incredible opportunity. The curriculum is built on big ideas (geography, economy, government, culture) that are meant to connect to how students see the real world. But traditional worksheets and fill-in-the-blank activities? They flatten all that richness into busywork.

Project-based learning in social studies doesn’t just look better on Instagram (though your students’ work will look amazing). It genuinely changes how students understand concepts. When a student has to design an entire civilization (deciding where it settles based on geography, how it feeds its people, what systems govern it) they’re not just learning about civilizations. They’re thinking like a historian, geographer, and economist all at once.

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Silly Classroom Games to Break Up the Day

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Come learn these simple and silly classroom games for your grade 3-6 classroom.

Teaching is stressful. It can be exhausting for everyone in the classroom. Sometimes you just need to break the tension with a silly game.

We use silly games strategically. They are not just randomly thrown into the day. The games we’ve included are very simple and can be modified for any of your needs. Read about the different silly classroom games we use in our classroom and how we use them to help strengthen our students mentally and physically.

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How to Learn French With French Canadian Celebrations

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You can excite your elementary students to learn French by teaching them all about French Canadian celebrations. We put together lessons and activities that can help inspire your students about French culture while you teach the basics of the French language. These lessons are designed for teachers who are not native speakers so come learn more.

Every year, Francophone communities across Canada celebrate their traditions and culture. People from around the world celebrate these events, too. There’s no better way to teach French as a Second Language than to connect to French Canadian celebrations and cultural events.

A large part of teaching French as a Second Language (FSL) is connecting students to the culture. Maybe even the most important part! This is an opportunity to learn about the culture of just over 20% of Canadians. That’s one in five Canadians who identify as French Canadians!

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Give Your Reading Instruction an Easy Twist

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Do your students need a fun way to share what they are reading in class? This is a great twist on literature circles and book clubs that your students will enjoy. Come read the whole post and get some ideas for your upper elementary or middle school language arts lessons.

For years we’ve done Literature Circles and tried lots of variations, but this one worked really well with our students. The problem with Literature Circles is that some students just don’t like the different activities. This version allows students to have some independence while still having accountability (and something to show for the time). If you are looking for an activity to spice up your reading instruction, look no further than Twisted Literature Circles in our TpT Store (USD) or BN Shop ($CAN).

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How to Teach Poetry Using Drama

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Instead of teaching poetry by simply reading or writing it, how about encouraging students to act it out. Teach poetry using drama to add a new dynamic to your language arts lessons.

Poetry is a beautiful and expressive form of literature that often expresses emotions, paints vivid imagery, and can be fun to read and write. Learning about poetic elements and figurative language can be engaging and memorable by teaching poetry using drama.

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How to Host Your Own Book Debates and Battles

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Inspire a love of reading and encourage your students to choose new books by using book debates. We've outlined the process to use this in your upper elementary classroom today based on the format for Canada Reads. Come take a look.

If you live in Canada, you might have heard of Canada Reads. Canada Reads is an annual “battle of the books” competition organized and broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We have enjoyed the event for years and thought about how much fun it would be to do the same style of book debates in our classroom. Students love a good battle. Come learn about how it went and how you can host your own book debates.

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Get Great Anchor Charts Without Making Great Anchor Charts

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Anchor charts are an excellent way to help students reference information as they are learning, but they don't need to be complicated or even pretty. Come learn how we make great anchor charts without any effort.

We make all our anchor charts with our students as we learn each lesson. It helps them connect to the information, and all of the language on the chart comes from the kids, but let’s face it: They are ugly. We’ve admired beautiful anchor charts online, and while we would love to decorate our classroom with those types of works of art, we believe that our students should be part of making them.

Come learn some of the ways we include our students when making anchor charts.

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How to Teach Students to Measure Area

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Teaching your students to calculate area can be a challenge, but we've pulled together great ideas to help introduce, practice, review and assess how students measure area.

The biggest mistake students often make when they measure area is that they aren’t quite sure what they are supposed to be measuring. Generally, the area is the amount of space inside a two-dimensional shape. We try to teach students math using plenty of hands-on activities. Come read about the ways we measure area in our upper elementary math class.

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The Cubic Quest: How to Teach Volume

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Measuring the volume of objects can be tricky for some students, but we put together our best ideas to get you started, help you review and even assess how your students are learning. Come read the whole post today!

Some students struggle with the concept of volume, but we’ve been doing this long enough that we can help. Generally, students mix up volume with capacity or don’t completely understand how to calculate the volume of different shapes. Come learn some of our tried and true activities that we use to help students understand volume.

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Five Amazing Capacity Quests to Enliven Your Classroom

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Teaching students to measure capacity can be a fun and engaging hands-on activity for your upper elementary math class. Come learn about some of the different ways we help our students learn to measure capacity in metric units.

Teaching students how to calculate capacity using metric units is an essential skill in mathematics and in life. If you’ve ever tried to put your leftovers in the wrong container, you know it’s important to be able to use referents and measure containers properly. Finding resources that measure capacity in metric units can also be a challenge for teachers in Canada, but we have you covered. Learning about capacity is more than just using formulas. Come learn some of the ways we teach this measurement concept in our upper elementary classroom.

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