Brain Ninjas

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Use Google Classroom to Make Your Life Easier

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Do you use Google Classroom for your everyday lessons? If not, you might want to consider trying it to get your in class or online learning organized. Learn some of the basics to set it up and get started with this post, which includes some must know tech skills for yourself and your upper elementary students.

When the pandemic hit and classes needed to jump online, we were so thankful that we’d been spending the past few years teaching our students how to use the technology in our classroom and at home through Google Classroom.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. There are other Learning Management Systems out there, but Google is relatively easy to use, and it’s free. If your students already know how to use other Google Tools, it’s really not much different.

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Getting to Know Your Students

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Getting to know your students helps with classroom management and lesson planning. Come learn some of the ways we get to know our students and start the school year off right.

Every starts with a new, fresh batch of kids that you want to get to know. Teachers need to know their students for several reasons. You need to understand them and their quirks because you’re going to spend the next ten months in close quarters trying to guide this child through all kinds of experiences. This is why you need to understand who your students really are.

You need to know who they are so you can plan to teach them. It’s just that simple.

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How to Teach Students to Self-Regulate

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Do you need help teaching your students to self-regulate? Managing emotions can be a challenge for some students, but there are practical strategies that can help. Come read the whole post.

What does it mean to self-regulate? Well, the obvious answer means for students to keep their feelings in check. But that’s a bit misleading. It implies that students need to squish down their feelings. Emotional regulation is a skill that students need to be taught. It does not come naturally for everyone.

Students who are having a hard time with self-regulation often appear to be disengaged, rude, helpless or otherwise frustrating for teachers. For many teachers, this means ramping up the WOW factor to try to entice students into wanting to learn. This might mean costumes, balloons, candy and confetti for math-but imagine if it could be something so much simpler?

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Debunking Five Differentiation Myths in the Classroom

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Have you been told that differentiating for your students means more work? Then you're probably doing it wrong. Come unlearn everything you learned about differentiation by debunking these myths.

We thought we had heard all the possible excuses for not differentiating instruction until this week during a professional development session. We were shocked to overhear (and in some cases, be told straight out to our faces) some of the reasons teachers are not differentiating for their students. Here are five differentiation myths we heard and the reasons the people who said them are misinformed.

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How to Explore Métis Storytelling Through Indigenous Art Lessons

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A student's Métis-inspired painting with bright colours and dots.

This is a lesson we’ve done with our students for years, partly because it never fails to create stunning artwork and partly because it’s fun to do. Students always love it. Artists always study the work of other artists to learn techniques. This art project celebrates Indigenous artists by studying and creating new works inspired by Indigenous art.

Come check out how we create these stunning pieces of art (which aren’t nearly as difficult as you might think) inspired by Indigenous artists.

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How to Shock Your Students With Engaging Electricity Lessons

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Are you looking for lessons and activities you can use to teach electricity concepts? We pulled together our favourite activities to save you time looking for them. Come take a look at these electricity lessons for your upper elementary science class.

As ninjas, we are always looking for ways to teach our students new skills like problem-solving and critical thinking without the students KNOWING we are teaching them skills like problem-solving and critical thinking. We love project-based learning, and electricity lessons are a great unit to practice some hands-on learning.

We give our students just enough information to be safe and get working on a project. Our students get so wrapped up in their projects that they don’t even notice they are learning. That’s why we’re the Brain Ninjas, and that’s why you need to try it, too!

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How to Survive With Animals in the Classroom

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Do you have classroom pets? We don't. Come hear some hilarious stories why we don't keep animals in the classroom anymore.

Do you have a class pet? Is it a live one or is it more of a mascot? When there are animals in the classroom, life is not boring.

We’ve had varied successes (and nightmares) over animals and insects in the classroom. We asked some of our teachers in our ninja community to share their best and worst animals in the classroom stories.

Warning: You will laugh and there is a possibility you’ll be traumatized.

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How to Avoid Device Disaster

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Are your classroom devices supposed to be saving you time, but they are a disaster and you spend all your time organizing them? Check out these time-saving and practical tips to keep those devices in order once and for all!

Great! You have a brand new set of devices to use in your classroom. That’s awesome, but there are some things you’re going to have to do in order to keep those devices in top-notch condition and avoid device disaster.

Now, we are fortunate enough to work in a school where a technician is the one who sets up all the student accounts and installs all the software. We actually have no ability to alter these things, so this post will focus on looking after the hardware (not using the devices).

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