Brain Ninjas

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Classroom Set Up

How to Create a Community Culture in Your Multi-Grade Classroom

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How do you teach a split class or combined grades? Start by combining your students into a culture where they get to know each other and create a classroom community that your students will love.

How do we create a community culture where all students feel they are equal and belong? It turns out we’ve had more combined-grade classes than straight-grade classes since we began teaching, so we can’t imagine teaching any other way. First of all, we call it a combined class rather than a split class. It’s the first thing we do with parents because our combined classes are not like the old ‘split’ classes.

When students come into our classroom on the first day of school, they immediately collect into two different groups-the lower grade and upper grade. They don’t know each other well and like to sit with their friends. We don’t give students a seating plan right away (or sometimes at all) so we can see which relationships form or are already in place, but then we slowly start changing their mindset about the combined class.

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How to Create a Sense of Agency in the Classroom

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Are you struggling with classroom management? This strategy changed our entire approach. No charts, games or reward systems! Just classroom management that works! Come and read this post to make a change in your classroom today.

Imagine a classroom where the students monitored themselves-and, not in that “hall pass police officer” type of way. Imagine a classroom where students encouraged each other to keep the room tidy, put things away and treat each other with respect. We call this a sense of agency.

It’s possible because each year we turn out a classroom full of polite and respectful students, but it takes work. Students need to be taught how to make decisions that are positive and what to do when they make a mistake. Creating a sense of agency is just as important as all the math and reading skills. It’s the key to classroom management. Want to know how?

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How to Save Your Sanity in the Classroom

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We teach our students some basic courtesies so that everyone in the classroom feels empowered, independent and responsible for our classroom together. Come check out how we do it.

Each year, we work hard to teach students some basic courtesies to make everyone happier and keep students responsible for their learning space. These are the basic things we teach repeatedly during the first month of school to our upper elementary students. Save your sanity by giving them a try.

We also want to stress that just because this is how we do things doesn’t mean these procedures will work ‘as is’ in your classroom. Feel free to solve the issues in your own way.

By teaching these courtesies, we reduce our own frustrations and the frustrations of students because they already know how to handle these situations.

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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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