Ninja Notes

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Collaborative Posters

Easy Ways to Show Appreciation to Your School Support Staff

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There are so many people in schools that work hard to make it a special place. Find ways to thank volunteers, bus drivers, support staff, custodians, educational assistants or anyone else who makes your school a special place in this blog post chock full of of easy and inexpesive ways to show your appreciation.

Hey, fellow teachers! We all know our schools wouldn’t run nearly as smoothly without the incredible support staff who keep everything ticking. Educational assistants, custodians, office staff, librarians, volunteers – they’re the unsung heroes who make our jobs easier and our schools brighter. Let’s show them some love! Meaningful appreciation doesn’t have to break the bank or eat up all your prep time. Come check out some of the ways we’re saying thank you to the people who help make our jobs easier.

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10 Quick Ways to Celebrate World Kindness Day

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World Kindness Day is a way to remind each other to be kind, but we focus on being kind all year in our classroom. Come learn some of the ways we celebrate kindness in our upper elementary and especially for World Kindness Day.

World Kindness Day is observed on November 13th. It’s a great opportunity to promote kindness, empathy, and compassion in your classroom, school, and community. One of the most important lessons about kindness is that it is possible for everyone to be kind. It doesn’t have to cost money or take a lot of time. Here are some of the ways we celebrate World Kindness Day in our school.

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Five Ways to Use a Collaborative Poster

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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).

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Make the Best of Your Natural Resources Lessons

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We have written resources to use to teach your students about natural resources. Students will learn how the resources are extracted, which are renewable and how they are used. Come take a look and get the lessons you need.

What do you think of when you think of natural resources? Forests? Oil and gas? Wind power? Teaching students about natural resources is easy when you have them examine all the objects around them. Humans rely on natural resources to make life easier. We use them to make shelter, provide energy and sustain our nutrition. Come learn about some of the lessons and activities we use to teach students about natural resources.

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How to Teach Human Body Systems to Young Scientists

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If you are teaching human body systems to your elementary science students, we've got everything you need to get your unit planned in record time. Come check out these activities, lessons, books, videos and so much more. It's perfect for the new Alberta science curriculum outcomes.

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.

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How to Teach Students About the Earth’s Spheres

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Are you looking for resources to teach students about the Earth's spheres? We wrote some lessons, found some books and videos and put it all together for you in one post. Come have a read and inspire your 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.

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