Let us help you teach like a ninja!
As a student, I never appreciated the first month of school. It always seemed like we didn’t get too deep into the content and spent a lot of time playing games and doing art projects. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I recognized how much work teachers do during the first month of school. While we created a list with nine of the most important, there really are so many more that could be added.
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Of course, you want to be a great teacher, so congratulations on getting the chance to be a teacher! Your student teaching experience is usually the first chance you’ll get to take control of the classroom. Many factors can come into play and you might have lots of “when I have my own classroom” moments, but use this time as a chance to learn and ask questions.
We’ve been lucky enough to have amazing supervising teachers when we began our careers and it was important to us to take on student teachers when we were ready for it. Passing on our knowledge is important. This is all the advice we have given to our student teachers over the years and we hope it can help you, too.
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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 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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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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A word wall is an organized display of a collection of words that are usually left posted on a wall or bulletin board for a long period of time. The words are typically high-frequency words. Posted word wall words can provide a visual reference for students throughout a unit of study, a term, or a year. Teachers and students use these words continuously.
But are you guilty of hanging up your words and then forgetting about them? Come learn how we make our word wall more interactive.
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Most Canadian elementary teachers teach their own art lessons and most do not have any formal training outside of what they learned while earning their Bachelor of Education. That training can vary from a semester of learning to techniques to an afternoon painting one watercolour painting. Don’t worry, ninjas, we got a collection of art projects that will last all year. No planning needed!
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It was the first day we were allowed to reenter the school after a major renovation. It was a disaster. Before the end of the previous year, we packed up everything and carefully labeled it. Nothing was returned to the classrooms. Students would be arriving in ONE day! Yup! You heard that right.
What a nightmare! Fortunately, we worked with the most amazing staff on the planet. We planned out a solution to bring everyone’s anxiety level down to a manageable level. We hosted a walking set-up bus.
What is a walking set-up bus? Keep reading to find out.
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We firmly believe that teachers should enjoy the time off they have and shouldn’t be forced to work. It’s the time we all need to replenish and prepare, but if you’re a little like us, you thrive when you are well-planned and prepared. It’s time to get organized for the year ahead.
That’s why we wrote this post. These are the things we try to get done over the summer months so we don’t have to worry about them in the first days of school. Having a simple plan makes answering the bombardment of questions from students so much easier.
Are you getting ready to start a new school year? Well, keep reading because these common sense things are the things you should be thinking about. We’re sharing them because these are all things we messed up in the past and want to pass down our wisdom.
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If you are often tagging #teachertired on your social media posts, then maybe it’s time you stopped joking about it and did something to change. Being tired is part of life, but if you are so tired that you cry in your car on a daily basis, then it’s time to break some bad teacher-tired habits.
This is not about judgment. This comes from love-because we have been there. We have cried in the car. We’ve stress-eaten crappy food. Sometimes we’ve taken out our tiredness in our family relationships. We’ve felt guilty for not being a good enough teacher, not being a good enough spouse, not being a good enough parent and not being a good enough cook (no one said it was rational). We often used humour to joke about how tired we were, but the real problem was that we kept letting it continue.
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If you are an elementary generalist in Canada, chances are, you are teaching art. That can be challenging if you don’t consider yourself an artist. Here are some tried and true routines we’ve put in place with our classes over the years that have saved our sanity.
Maybe you’ll start enjoying teaching art again!
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You’ve been asked to do teach reading as part of your Language Arts program and you’re a little worried. It seems overwhelming. Teaching reading can be challenging.
We’ve been there. It feels like you have to learn so much on the spot and you’re concerned that you won’t do a good job. Here’s the truth. You’ll learn as you go and you will get better at it. Everyone has to start somewhere.
A big part of doing a good job maximizing your teaching time with students comes from being prepared and organized. So, let’s dig in and get you organized so you can do a great job of teaching reading.
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Writing emergency sub plans for a supply teacher is a big pain in the butt. Even more so, when some sort of family emergency comes up and you’re still legally responsible for two days of classes (or more depending on where you teach).
It’s strange that these certified teachers who come into our classroom don’t have to plan anything for two full days. At least, that is the rule in the province where we live. Teachers are responsible for leaving two full days of plans for their students regardless of the situation. This must be in the only job in the world where you do just as much work on the days you aren’t there as on the days you are.
I once wrote sub plans on my phone from a hospital bed. True story. And as crazy as that was, I learned a valuable lesson from it.
Emergency Sub Plans!
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