Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Collaboration

Five Ways to Use a Collaborative Poster

by

Collaborative posters are much more than simply colouring. You can use them to teach, communicate, work together and have fun. Come learn different ways to use collaborative posters and justify the learning that can happen during the process.

We love creating collaborative posters. They are so much fun to make, but our students also love to create them. Of course, we have made over one hundred different designs and nobody is going to have the time to use them all. But, there’s more than one way to use a collaborative poster. Come learn some of the different ways you can use them (and spoiler alert–they aren’t more complicated and still don’t require much prep).

[Read more…] about Five Ways to Use a Collaborative Poster

Math Worksheet Games Your Students Will Love

by

There are lots of different ways to use a math worksheet to help students learn to collaborate, reinforce skills, and deepen their understanding. Check out these activities that you can set up and use in minutes with the worksheets you already have printed. Save your time with these engaging activities.

We rarely use worksheets because they don’t align with our teaching style. We tend to use a lot of project-based learning or inquiry process activities, but every so often we find that our students need a little extra practice with computation in math. That is when we bring out the worksheets.

However, we don’t often just hand them out and expect our students to fill them in. Here are some ways we use a math worksheet in a less-than-traditional way.

[Read more…] about Math Worksheet Games Your Students Will Love

Easy to Use Classroom Activities for Earth Day

by

Are you looking for activities to do with your upper elementary class? We pulled together Earth Day themed lessons and activities (but they can be used any time of year) for your upper elementary classroom. Come check out the resources, books, and ideas to use right away.

Every day in our classroom is Earth Day. It’s part of our science lessons to learn about energy conservation, so it’s easy to make sure we talk about the importance of conservation regularly.

One year a fellow teacher thought it would be a great idea to print a little paper globe for each student in our school (that’s several hundred) and write a “thank you to the Earth” type sentence.

I don’t often speak up at meetings, but I couldn’t resist this one. Isn’t it counterproductive to teach students about conservation by wasting all that paper?

Everyone agreed, but NO ONE had any suggestions on what we could do instead. And that’s how we came up with this list of Earth Day activities (and why you should try some of them).

[Read more…] about Easy to Use Classroom Activities for Earth Day

How to be a Great Teaching Teammate

by

Sometimes co-teaching or team teaching can be a challenge. We've managed to build a friendship and great working relationship after we were asked to share a classroom. Come learn about how to be a great teaching teammate and make the most of your partnership.

Are you someone people like to work with? Or not? It’s too easy to blame others when we aren’t happy in a situation.

We’ve been in the teaching game long enough to know there are certain people we avoid getting stuck on committees with. We know it will be stressful and someone always ends up rage eating.

We will be the first to admit that we have been all the things we’re about to tell you, so take our advice with a grain of salt (on the rim of a margarita is recommended). No one is the perfect teaching teammate. It’s all about reciprocation.

What?!?

It’s about the give and take.

Like I will give you a margarita or I will take that margarita. Wouldn’t that be nice, but…

When things are too much give or too much take, everything falls apart. So, whether you mostly give or you mostly take, it’s time to balance things out to be a teaching teammate.

[Read more…] about How to be a Great Teaching Teammate