Brain Ninjas

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Here is Your Back to School Pep Talk

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It's back to school season and sometimes you need a good laugh to set the year off right. Come read through some of our favourite teacher stories and get your back to school pep talk.

It’s time to head back to school. There are two types of teachers in the world. There are the ones who cannot wait to get back into the classroom and spend their whole summer break planning and prepping. And they’re the ones who squeeze every last drop of summer out before heading back.

It doesn’t matter which one you are. You can even be a little of both. Loving your students and your free time doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. You are allowed to have mixed emotions.

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How to Build Relationships With Students

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Are you struggling with classroom management? Take the time to build relationships with your students. It is is just one way to help develop your classroom management strategies. Get some easy ideas to get you started.

Taking time from teaching to get to know your students is worth every second. Although typically you want to spend the first month of school working on building relationships with students, it’s never too late. It is hard to teach students when you don’t know them. It is challenging for students to take risks when they don’t know you. When students feel connected they will give you their best.

Not sure where to start? 

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What You Should Do On Break Before Back to School

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Are you looking for some ways to enjoy your break from teaching? Try out some of these so you are refreshed and ready for back to school.

Teachers are notorious for never really taking a break. We’re super teachers! We never need sleep or downtime or family. Somehow we feel guilty if we don’t spend our whole summers getting ready for the new school year. If that sounds like you and you’re a teacher on break, then this post is for you.

It’s true-we could spend every waking moment working on our classrooms or planning amazing lessons for our students. Should we feel guilty for not spending every weekend slaving over marking or making resources?

Absolutely not. After all these years of teaching, we’ve managed to figure out that it will still work out whether we spend a thousand hours or three. Summer is a well-deserved break. It’s time to rethink the teacher on break mentality.

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Ten Ways to Procrastinate Right Now

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There’s always so much to do. Before the pandemic, I always thought that I didn’t get things done because I didn’t have enough time. Well, that turned out to be completely untrue because when you’re locked in your house for months on end with nothing to do, these things still don’t get done. I’ve been lying to myself. There are so many ways to procrastinate.

You’re probably lying to yourself too, because you’re here reading this post instead of doing whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.

But why are you procrastinating, and how should you go about doing it?

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How to be a Great Teaching Teammate

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Sometimes co-teaching or team teaching can be a challenge. We've managed to build a friendship and great working relationship after we were asked to share a classroom. Come learn about how to be a great teaching teammate and make the most of your partnership.

Are you someone people like to work with? Or not? It’s too easy to blame others when we aren’t happy in a situation.

We’ve been in the teaching game long enough to know there are certain people we avoid getting stuck on committees with. We know it will be stressful and someone always ends up rage eating.

We will be the first to admit that we have been all the things we’re about to tell you, so take our advice with a grain of salt (on the rim of a margarita is recommended). No one is the perfect teaching teammate. It’s all about reciprocation.

What?!?

It’s about the give and take.

Like I will give you a margarita or I will take that margarita. Wouldn’t that be nice, but…

When things are too much give or too much take, everything falls apart. So, whether you mostly give or you mostly take, it’s time to balance things out to be a teaching teammate.

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How to Create Your Dream Home Office

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Do you take your teaching work home? Is your home office the dining room table or do you have a room? Here are some things for you to consider. Come read the post.

When you work from home, do you have an actual office or are you like so many teachers piling things high on the dining room table or the living couch?

That strategy works, but after a while it can take a toll. We all need a safe, reliable space to work in, but that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank.

Here are some things to consider when designing your own home office.

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Ways to Plan That Work for You

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Are you looking for ways to plan your lessons? Do you use paper or digital? Come learn all the different ways we've tried to create our lesson plans over the years to save you some time. There are even free planning pages for you to use.

You’ve seen those beautiful planners all over Pinterest and on everyone’s social media. They are masterpieces that we wish could emulate, but alas, us ninjas have a lot going on and so our plan books have been an evolution. We realized early on that our plans aren’t pretty and we needed a way to share a classroom and thus, share our plans with each other.

Finding the planning style for you takes time. Here are some of our best tips for figuring out your planning style.

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Less is More: Teacher Wellness Strategies That Work

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If you're looking for some practical teacher wellness strategies, look no further. These ones DON'T require more work and will have you feeling less overwhelmed. In fact, this is all about doing less. Check it out!

Sometimes it feels like teachers are stretched so thin. Teacher wellness strategies are buzzwords, but what does it mean to you?

It’s impossible to do it all. That is when the guilt sets in. It feels like we should be able to do more, but maybe the trick is to do less? Of course, in a perfect world teachers would have input into making these decisions, but a girl can dream, right?

So, what are some ways we do less so that we can experience more? Check out these teacher wellness strategies to balance your mental health with the career you love.

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The Truth About New Math

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What is new math and why does everyone keep talking about it? Here is what we tell parents about new math (spoiler alert-math isn't new). Get some practical tips for debunking the math myths.

New math is ruining education. Or at least this is what we keep hearing people (like parents, the media, and politicians) say.

What is this “new math” of which you speak?  I see the memes on Facebook and wonder, have I been teaching mathematics wrong? Has it changed? Did I miss an email about this?

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Unlock the Hidden Keys to Teacher Wellness

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It can be easy to let yourself get run down. The only way to take care of yourself is to figure out what you need for self care and then stick to it. Don't let teaching take away your health. Come unlock the hidden keys to teacher wellness.

What is it about teaching that doesn’t allow a person to fully turn off their teaching brain? Is the chemical composition of a teacher that makes them want to give every last drop of energy in the classroom? What about nurturing? Is teacher wellness a myth?

What is it that makes you a great teacher?

Like most teachers, you are a caring, compassionate person who would give the clothes off your back in order to make the lives of your students better. You are willing to give your hard-earned money to make sure they have the materials they need to be successful in your classroom. You’re willing to give your time to make sure they have the best possible experiences while they are in your classroom this year.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, but do you know when you’ve crossed the line into being unhealthy?

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How to Make Students Listen Without Yelling

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Are you struggling to get students to listen? Do you feel like yelling all the time? Are you running out of patience? Come learn how to get your students to listen without all the yelling.

Do you have to repeat yourself constantly because your students just don’t know how to listen? Maybe it’s not them. Are your directions unclear? Do you have their attention? Maybe your instructions were unclear. Nobody likes a yelly teacher. So here is how you can fix your directions and improve their listening skills at the same time.

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Conquer Math With These Proven Multiplication Strategies

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Are you struggling with teaching multiplication because students just don't know their times tables? Check out these ways we practice and build math fact fluency without the pressure ot timed drills.

We have taught students in grades four and five for so long and one trend we’ve noticed is that students cannot retain their multiplication times tables. What is happening to those little brains? Or is it because we teach these facts differently? We’ve been thinking about the different multiplication strategies we use in our classroom.

When we went to school, math drills were all the rage. But to be honest, the stress of answering sixty multiplication questions in less than a minute was horrible. And, I was lucky because I knew my times tables, but I just couldn’t write fast enough no matter how hard I tried. Those drills weren’t an assessment of my math skills. They were an assessment of how quickly I could write.

And don’t even get me started about the time I wrote a zero, but it was messy and looked like a six. Ugh! So, I knew I couldn’t give my students math drills. Here’s what we do instead.

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