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Everyone needs to understand the basic systems that help keep humans alive. The Alberta science curriculum focuses on four main systems: circulatory (cardiovascular), musculoskeletal (bones and muscles), respiratory and digestive. There are many more systems, but this post will focus on teaching these four to your Grade 5 students. Come learn how we teach this unit from beginning to end.
[Read more…] about How to Teach Human Body Systems to Young Scientists
The new Alberta science curriculum asks students in Grade 4 to learn about the Earth’s spheres and how they interact with each other. That meant we got the opportunity to learn about them, too. We pulled together some of the best resources we’ve used to learn about the spheres and the resources we’ve written to help our students.
When we talk about the Earth’s spheres, we refer to the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. We know there are more spheres, but these are the ones focused on in our science curriculum. Learning about the Earth’s spheres helps students understand how our planet survives and thrives.
[Read more…] about How to Teach Students About the Earth’s Spheres
In upper elementary, we’re asked to teach positive and negative numbers. This is when we start to refer to numbers as integers, which means reframing math vocabulary for our students. Come learn how we teach integers in our upper elementary math class.
[Read more…] about How to Teach Integers With Positive and Negative Numbers
Triangles are fundamental shapes in your geometry lessons. Understanding their properties lays a strong foundation for further mathematical learning. Students need to understand measurements of side lengths and angles to classify triangles. Come learn some of the ways to teach classifying triangles in your upper elementary classroom.
[Read more…] about Ways to Teach Classifying Triangles
Rounding numbers is an important mathematical skill for everyday life. Understanding how to round whole numbers and decimals not only strengthens numeracy skills but empowers students to make informed estimations and calculations. Gone are the days of teachers being able to use the “you won’t have a calculator with your every way you go” as the excuse for learning to round numbers. Instead, students need to understand all the different uses for rounding and how it relates to estimating. Learn how we teach rounding numbers in our upper elementary classroom.
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Have you been hired as a substitute teacher at the last minute? Are there no substitute teacher plans in place or you can’t find them? We pulled together this list of activities you can use to get your day sorted out. Most of the activities are designed for upper elementary, but you might be able to adapt them for your group of students.
[Read more…] about Last Minute Substitute Teacher Ideas When Plans Fall Through
With so many things to do in math class each day, it’s almost impossible to help our students build fluency in math facts because there simply isn’t enough time. Timed drills have been proven to be unsuccessful for the majority of students because rather than testing mathematical knowledge, they test how fast a student thinks or writes. So, we were looking for a way to help students practice their math fact fluency without time constraints. That’s how we came up with our math fact fluency graphs.
[Read more…] about How to Build Math Fact Fluency in Your Classroom
Often when the school year starts, we do a few different writing activities to get a sense of how well students can (or cannot) write. One of the things we continually see is the lack of conventions regardless of whether students write by hand or type it into a device. We found that a simple lesson around the different types of sentences changed many of the punctuation problems. Come read about the lesson and get some ideas for your classroom.
[Read more…] about How to Teach Types of Sentences and Fix Punctuation Problems
Field trips can be so much fun when they run smoothly. However, there can also be those field trips where you want to pull your hair out or vow never to do it again. We’ve gone on hundreds of field trips over our careers. Some of these trips are cherished memories of special classes. Others are permanent scars and trauma (ok, that might be pushing it). Come learn from our mistakes so you can avoid these field trip problems.
[Read more…] about 5 Field Trip Problems and How to Prevent Them
Are you using geometry books in your math classes? Why not? Even simple books can help students visualize concepts. Even books that might be considered “baby books” can be used in your upper elementary math. There is more than one way to use a book. Come read how we do it.
[Read more…] about How to Unfold Geometry: Books to Shape Your Unit
Once upon a time, there was a teacher who discovered her students didn’t know the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Yes! It’s a true story. It is not a fairy tale. With each year, it is surprising that fewer and fewer students know the traditional fairy tales. It seems that reading classic stories before entering school has become less and less common at home. With the huge selection of stories, teachers just don’t have time to read them all.
Even in upper elementary, one of our favourite units is fairy tales. We start our fairy tale unit by reading some of the old classics. If you have older students who are a little twisty, you can even share the darker versions. We talk about why fairy tales were used by parents and how the stories have changed over time. Come learn about how we use fairy tales in our upper elementary classroom.
[Read more…] about Unravel the Magic of Fractured Fairy Tale Activities!
If you have been using a forced copy to receive Google files, you may have noticed a glitch that can cause problems. To be clear, when we allow for a copy of our Google files to be made in your drive, we should never have to share or give you access. We’ve already done that step to automate it. However, there have been lots of problems with Google glitches lately so we gathered up all the knowledge we could find online and put it in an easy-to-use format so that you can get your files as quickly as possible. Many teacher authors like ourselves use these forced copy links because sharing folders isn’t possible (yet).
[Read more…] about How to Fix Your Forced Copy Google Glitches
