Ninja Notes

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Classroom Community

Resources to Celebrate Diwali in the Classroom

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Are you looking for resources to use to celebrate Diwali in the classroom? We put together a list of resources to learn all about the Festival of Lights including a book list, videos and art projects to celebrate. Come have a read!

Diwali is the Festival of Lights. It is also known as Dipawali and it is the most important festival of the year for the Hindi religion. Other religions like Buddists also celebrate Diwali. While it was traditionally celebrated by Hindus, now it is more widely celebrated by people around the world including by Buddists, Jains and Sikhs. Since this celebration is important to many different people around the world, it is very possible you will have students in your classroom who celebrate. To those students, Diwali is as important to them as Christmas is to Christians. Many school districts in Canada have added Diwali to their school calendars. Read on to find resources you can use to celebrate Diwali in the classroom.

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15 Free Activities for the First Month of School

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Are you looking for free activities you can use during the first month of school? We gathered up some of our favourite writing, math, reading, art and classroom community activities just for you. Best of all, they're all free! Come check it out!

The first month of school is filled with so many new adventures. There is so much to do regarding setting up classroom routines. We don’t start teaching content until a few weeks into the school year. Up until that time, we see what new our students can do. We generally assess reading and writing and review math. This is a great way to get to know your students so you can plan your lessons for their needs. Here are nine free activities we use for the first month of school.

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7 Fantastic Ways to Create Classroom Community

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Building a caring classroom community doesn't happen by chance. It takes skills to create a classroom community where students take care of each other. Come learn some of the ways to build classroom community in your upper elementary classroom.

Have you ever seen those students that just work together in a classroom like a well-oiled machine? Have you ever dreamt of a classroom community full of harmony where students are on track and work together to learn in the best possible environment? It can happen, but building a caring classroom community doesn’t happen by chance.

We work hard teaching our students how to work together, how to care about each other and how to create a strong community of learners. Come read some of the ways we do this in our classroom.

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How to Use Collaborative Tasks to Create Classroom Community

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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.

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Make Wellness Lessons a Priority in Your Classroom

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Wellness skills are life-long skills that benefit everyone. It's important for students to see these skills in action throughout their days if they are going to build them into their entire lives. Come learn how we do that every day.

When the health and wellness curriculum just becomes a list of things to teach, it really misses the mark. If the goal of health and wellness lessons are to teach student life-long ways to take care of themselves, it should be woven throughout their days at school in addition to explicit teaching. We’ve evaluated some of the ways we put our wellness lessons front and centre in our classroom.

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How to Set the Noise Level in Your Classroom

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Is the noise level in your classroom driving you up the wall? When noise gets out of hand, it's time for a reset. Come learn what we discovered and how you can make it work for you.

Do you ever feel your classroom just keeps getting louder and louder until you want to take your ears off? As your students get more comfortable, the noise level can get out of hand. Of course, the activity going on in your room can often impact the noise, but your body language and your tone of voice play a bigger role than you may realize. This is a real experiment we tried on our students.

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