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Teaching Strategies

Amazing Measurement Activities to Stretch Math

by BrainNinjasWP

Are you looking for measurement activities to spice up your math lessons? We collected all our favourite ideas for our upper elementary classroom and put it all together for you. Come have a read and get your math class class planned in minutes.

Measurement is one of those math strands that requires lots of hands-on activities and practice. While students can learn about the different measurements and units through learning about them, it essentially takes a lot of practice measuring to really understand how all the measurements work together.

We have found that a combination of book learning and reference materials supports students while they use units to measure different items. Read on to learn about some of the different measurement activities we use to help students master the metric system (and other units of measurement).

[Read more…] about Amazing Measurement Activities to Stretch Math

Filed Under: Engaging Lessons, Teaching Strategies Tagged With: digital task cards, interactive math notebooks, Math, math error analysis, math errors, Math Lessons, math manipulatives, Math Worksheets, Mathematics, task cards, Teachers Pay Teachers

How to Teach Students to Tell Time

by BrainNinjasWP

Teaching time can be a stressfull situation in math class. How do you teach your students to tell time? We've put together all our activities for reading clocks, understanding the 12 Hour and 24 Hour clock, AM/PM, elapsed time and calendars. Come add these activities to your time lessons!

Teaching students to tell time is a necessary and difficult challenge, but time lessons are a life skill.

Some people argue that reading analog clocks is a skill that is slowly disappearing. Perhaps one day, digital clocks will completely take over, but for now, they are still around, causing grief for teachers and students around the world during time lessons in math class.

Come learn some of the activities we use to help our students learn to read the time with these time lessons that will save you time.

[Read more…] about How to Teach Students to Tell Time

Filed Under: Engaging Lessons, Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Elapsed Time, interactive math notebooks, Math, math errors, Math Lessons, math manipulatives, Math Worksheets, Mathematics, Reading Clocks, Telling Time, Time Lessons

Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

by BrainNinjasWP

Are you missing out on the benefits of using drama circles in your upper elementary classroom? Come learn how to use them to help with listening skills, reading abilities and for the fun of it.

Before learning about drama circles, we weren’t sure how we could incorporate drama into our classroom in a meaningful way that didn’t take away from all the work we needed to do. Putting on a play just didn’t seem like a good use of our learning time, but we knew our students enjoyed acting. That is when we considered some of the benefits of drama circles in our upper elementary classroom.

[Read more…] about Are You Missing Out on the Love of Drama Circles?

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Classroom Community, Confidence, Drama, Drama Circles, Expression, Listening Skills, Poetry and Drama, read aloud, Reading, Reading Activities, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reluctant readers, Teachers Pay Teachers, Teaching Reading

How to Differentiate Math Lessons

by BrainNinjasWP

What is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons? Come learn some of the ways we streamlin differentiation in our upper elementary classroom.

Differentiated instruction is expected of most classroom teachers these days. Long gone are the times when one worksheet could be given to every member of the class and they would all work on that page until every question was done correctly. Since the pandemic began, the once manageable (pause for laughter here) learning gaps between students have gotten even worse. So what is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons?

[Read more…] about How to Differentiate Math Lessons

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Differentiated Instruction, Differentiation, digital task cards, interactive math notebooks, Interactive Notebooks, Math, Math Lessons, math manipulatives, Math Worksheets, Mathematics, self-checking task cards, Small Groups, task cards

How to Have Fun With Homonyms

by BrainNinjasWP

Do your students struggle with reading and writing homonyms? We brainstormed a list of games and activities to help students learn and practice the difference between homographs and homophones. We've even included a list of picture books with homonyms in them. Come have a read today!

Do your students struggle with using the correct word when they are writing? Do homophones confuse your students when they are reading? They are not alone. There are more than six thousand different homophones in the English language. No wonder it’s so confusing for students.

Teaching homophones and homographs can be a lot of fun. We’ve collected some of our favourite lessons, books and activities that you can use in your classroom to practice using homonyms. Come read more!

[Read more…] about How to Have Fun With Homonyms

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: English Language Arts, english language learners, Homographs, Homonyms, Homophones, Parts of Speech, Reading, Spelling, Teachers Pay Teachers, Words, Writing

How to Use Collaborative Tasks to Create Classroom Community

by BrainNinjasWP

Collaborative tasks help students learn to work together toward the classroom community they want to achieve. Read more about how we use collaborative tasks to build classroom community and learn more about the types of tasks we use.

One of the most effective classroom management strategies is the classroom community you build with your students. We start our school year with collaborative tasks to help students get to know each other. These activities help students learn to communicate and build trust. Collaborative tasks help students learn to work together toward the classroom community they want to achieve.

Come learn more about how we use collaborative tasks in our classroom.

[Read more…] about How to Use Collaborative Tasks to Create Classroom Community

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Alberta, Back to School, Brain Ninjas Shop, Bulletin Boards, Classroom Community, Classroom Management, Collaborative Posters, Collaborative tasks, Diwali, Eid, Eid Al-Fitr, group work, Indigenous Cultures, Indigenous People of Canada, Posters, Remembrance Day, research, research skills, Teachers Pay Teachers, Teamwork

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