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When you live in a winter climate like northern Canada, the opportunities to do activities related to snow are endless. We try to build weather-related snow activities into our classes wherever possible. We teach in upper elementary, but we’ve used some of these activities with our younger buddies and some we’ve challenged ourselves. Come check out these snow activities that will keep you busy all winter.
[Read more…] about How to Have Snow Much Fun With These Snow Activities
Spring is a great time in upper elementary classrooms. By this point in the school year, students understand the routines and things tend to start running smoothly. Of course, there is also the spring fever that tends to creep in and make students a little squirrely as the weather changes. Nothing says spring like the smell of damp socks and slushy halls after recess breaks.
We put together some of our favourite spring classroom activities that we use to keep students learning and moving forward. Come see which of these would work in your upper elementary classroom.
[Read more…] about Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom
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.
[Read more…] about Resources to Celebrate Diwali in the Classroom
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.
[Read more…] about How to Use Collaborative Tasks to Create Classroom Community
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
The year has started. Things are starting to settle and it’s time to count your blessings in the classroom. We call the start of the year through Thanksgiving (well, Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October) the beta period. It’s the time of year to try things out, get to know the students, build relationships, and set up the year for success. It can be hard to be thankful in the classroom unless we take a moment to sit back and list the things we are grateful for.
The beta period is not the time of year we spend getting deep into the content. We review. We read. And we talk about what is coming next. We check out our skills and show what we can or can’t do.
Most of all, we celebrate all the things were are thankful for in our classroom. Keep reading to see how we spend this special time of year.
[Read more…] about Being Thankful in the Classroom
