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Gift Festive Christmas Classroom Activities to Your Students

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Do you need some Christmas classroom activities to keep your students busy during December that are still valuable learning opportunities? Look no further than this list of easy to implement (and barely prep) ideas. Come check out some Christmas math or design a social media account for an elf. These Christmas activities are perfect for your upper elementary classroom.

You know that week in December when you’re constantly called down to the auditorium for concert rehearsals, some of your students are away sick, some have left for vacation early, and you have to keep a classroom full of excited kids busy? Do you need some Christmas classroom activities to solve the problem?

Christmas is fun and all, but it’s so hard to keep kids interested in learning, and it’s a challenging time to introduce new concepts with all those interruptions. What’s a teacher to do?

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How to Make Recycled Can Characters

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Upcycle cans from your house into these adorable can characters. It's great as a Christmas craft or a language arts character study.

Here’s a great reason to eat potato chips (you don’t have to eat them, but it’s a good excuse). Have your students collect Pringles cans or any other metal or cardboard can that has a plastic lid and upcycle them into a great holiday activity. Our students have loved making recycled can characters over the years.

This activity will work with other types of cans that are made of cardboard with a metal base and plastic lid.

We made our cans into snowmen, gingerbread men, penguins, Santas, elves and reindeer as a fun Christmas craft activity that parents will cherish for years to come.

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12 Simple Christmas Tree Art Projects We Love

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Collection of simple Christmas tree art projects for elementary students

Looking for easy Christmas tree art projects for your classroom? Here are 12 we’ve tested using pastels, paint, watercolour, ribbon and recycled materials. Most take about an hour, and each one can become a card, plaque, ornament or hallway decoration.

If you are an elementary generalist who teaches your own art, it can be challenging finding projects that look great, teach skills and aren’t so complicated that YOU can’t figure them out. Don’t worry! We’ve got some great Christmas tree art projects for you. They use regular materials you’ll be able to find in your school and don’t take more than an hour or so to create.

In fact, we think you’ll probably create more than one because they are just so cute!

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How to Use Google Meet to Run a Book Club

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If you like to run Book Clubs in your upper elementary classroom, then you should try using Google Meet to run them. Come read through our post to see how we put these in place and get yourself some useful tools to make it all go easier.

Are you looking for a twist on a Book Club to help spice up your reading instruction? Using Google Meet can be just the twist you need to get students reading, writing and talking about books. If you’re teaching reading, you need to give this a shot!

The point of book clubs is to have students (or people) read the same book together and then discuss the book. It is not about reading a book and then doing comprehension questions. No one wants to do that (or mark that). It’s about fostering a love of reading for life.

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How to Teach Reading With Book Clubs

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Using book clubs is a great way to help students read books with support while enjoying books they've chosen. We put together all our book club tips in one post to get you started. Make book clubs part of your language arts instruction. Come have a read.

Our students love to have some choice over what they read as part of our Language Arts program. Book Clubs are one way to encourage reading and discussions just like adults do. Students read for enjoyment and then talk about what they have read and recommend books to others. Setting up book clubs can be a little confusing, especially if it’s your first time. Don’t worry! We’re here to help you out.

You’re going to love book clubs!

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How to Teach the Importance of Remembrance Day

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Show students how important Remembrance Day is in Canada.

As we were growing up, many of us had family members who had served in World War II. It was easier to understand the purpose of Remembrance Day when Grandpa would wear his medals to our school service. Our current students are a few generations removed from that war, though some have had family members serve in Korea, Afghanistan or with the United Nations Peacekeepers. It is difficult for some of them to understand the abstractness of war, so it is even more important for us to give them a realistic view of those events and the history behind them.

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How to Create a Community Culture in Your Multi-Grade Classroom

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How do you teach a split class or combined grades? Start by combining your students into a culture where they get to know each other and create a classroom community that your students will love.

How do we create a community culture where all students feel they are equal and belong? It turns out we’ve had more combined-grade classes than straight-grade classes since we began teaching, so we can’t imagine teaching any other way. First of all, we call it a combined class rather than a split class. It’s the first thing we do with parents because our combined classes are not like the old ‘split’ classes.

When students come into our classroom on the first day of school, they immediately collect into two different groups-the lower grade and upper grade. They don’t know each other well and like to sit with their friends. We don’t give students a seating plan right away (or sometimes at all) so we can see which relationships form or are already in place, but then we slowly start changing their mindset about the combined class.

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Being Thankful in the Classroom

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Canadian Thanksgiving is early in he year, which is why we call the time from Back to School until thanksgiving the beta period. Come find out what we use it for and get loads of resources you can use to be thankful in the classroom or acknowledge Thanksgiving.

The year has started. Things are starting to settle and it’s time to count your blessings in the classroom. We call the start of the year through Thanksgiving (well, Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October) the beta period. It’s the time of year to try things out, get to know the students, build relationships, and set up the year for success. It can be hard to be thankful in the classroom unless we take a moment to sit back and list the things we are grateful for.

The beta period is not the time of year we spend getting deep into the content. We review. We read. And we talk about what is coming next. We check out our skills and show what we can or can’t do.

Most of all, we celebrate all the things were are thankful for in our classroom. Keep reading to see how we spend this special time of year.

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The Reasons For Project-Based Learning

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Do you want to try project-based learning in your classroom, but you aren't sure where to start? Check out this post that helps you get started with some simple projects and activities to get you started. We've even added a free planning page to get you on your way.

Project-based learning can be a challenge because it moves the control from the teacher to the student. When we began our teaching journey, controlling every aspect of student work from beginning to end seemed like the right thing to do. As we’ve evolved as teachers, we learned that loosening the reigns has many benefits. Check out some of the best reasons we use project-based learning in our classroom.

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How to Create a Sense of Agency in the Classroom

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Are you struggling with classroom management? This strategy changed our entire approach. No charts, games or reward systems! Just classroom management that works! Come and read this post to make a change in your classroom today.

Imagine a classroom where the students monitored themselves-and, not in that “hall pass police officer” type of way. Imagine a classroom where students encouraged each other to keep the room tidy, put things away and treat each other with respect. We call this a sense of agency.

It’s possible because each year we turn out a classroom full of polite and respectful students, but it takes work. Students need to be taught how to make decisions that are positive and what to do when they make a mistake. Creating a sense of agency is just as important as all the math and reading skills. It’s the key to classroom management. Want to know how?

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Use the Learning Pit to Teach Growth Mindset

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Do your students struggle with giving up as soon as the work gets challenging? Do they lack determination or grit? This is one of the best lessons we ever learned and we regularly use it with our students to show them how to embrace a growth mindset. Come learn about the learning pit.

Have you been learning about growth mindset and wanting to try to instill some determination in your students? Have you heard of the learning pit? It might be the key to teaching students to learn how to learn.

Do you have students that break down during tasks that require a bit of problem-solving? Are they frustrated? Do they yell and scream or run out of the classroom? You need the learning pit.

Teaching students to overcome challenges can be difficult when we live in a society that is all about getting things done quickly. We have technology, parents and constant distractions constantly telling students they can learn anything anytime with little or no effort. As a teacher, this is very challenging when students feel they’ve failed, get frustrated or give up right away.

This was what was happening in our classroom. Students who could manage challenges were more successful overall because they kept working until they got it. It felt like it was a lack of effort, but it was much more than that. So we started investigating and researching best practices to help us teach students to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

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How to Save Your Sanity in the Classroom

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We teach our students some basic courtesies so that everyone in the classroom feels empowered, independent and responsible for our classroom together. Come check out how we do it.

Each year, we work hard to teach students some basic courtesies to make everyone happier and keep students responsible for their learning space. These are the basic things we teach repeatedly during the first month of school to our upper elementary students. Save your sanity by giving them a try.

We also want to stress that just because this is how we do things doesn’t mean these procedures will work ‘as is’ in your classroom. Feel free to solve the issues in your own way.

By teaching these courtesies, we reduce our own frustrations and the frustrations of students because they already know how to handle these situations.

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