Ninja Notes

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Critical Thinking

Dig Up Dinosaurs in Alberta With These Amazing Activities

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Whether you are teaching students about the different dinosaurs that lived in Alberta, how fossil fuels are created or how they died, these lessons and activities are designed for your elementary science class and only take moments to prep. Come take a look!

Most children go through a phase fascinated by dinosaurs. It only fits that living in Alberta means digging up dinosaurs and learning about fossil fuels. While learning about the specific dinosaurs is not in school curriculums, the result of their extinction is part of our lives today. Come learn about some of the ways we bring dinosaurs into our elementary science lessons. We’ve updated our lessons for the new Alberta science curriculum, but they work for any teacher wanted to roar through science (see what we did there?).

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Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately?

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Makerspaces give your students the change to be creative, solve problems and learn in new ways. They add to your STEM, STEAM, science or art lessons too. Still not sure why you should have a makerspace? Check out this post!

Makerspaces. They seem to be all the buzz, but the concept that drives them isn’t new. For many years, we’ve been focused on directing every moment of our students’ lives. As parents, the lives of children are scheduled to the point they never have a moment to decide for themselves what to do. As teachers, if our students don’t look like they’re working, we worry that someone will think they aren’t learning. So when did we decide as adults that play is a bad thing?

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How to Leverage Critical Thinking Challenges to Your Advantage

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Students need opportunities to try critical thinking in a fun and safe way. They should be encouraged to explore, rethink, design, test and learn. We try to create lessons and activities that encourage critical thinking and problem solving. Come learn what we do!

What do you do when you want to challenge students, but you also want them to learn? We give them critical thinking challenges. Critical thinking requires many skills-problem solving, collaboration, design thinking, and perseverance. When a critical thinking question is carefully crafted, you can get students to explore learning outcomes while having fun and being engaged in their learning at the same time.

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10 Things We Do On the First Day of School

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We use this routine for our first day of school each year. It works for most upper elementary classrooms and is sure to get your new school year started off right.

Be honest. You either LOVE the first day of school or hate it. As a teacher, it’s a fresh start to get back to spending quality time with these little darlings. For us, it’s always a chance to correct things we did in the past and start all over again, but there are ten things we do on the first day of school that help our whole year run smoothly. Turn back to school into a great time of year for you and your students. Keep on reading to find out how to make your first day back go smoothly.

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How to Host a Maker Walk

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Create an opportunity for your makers to show off their creative sides by hosting a Maker Walk. We' veput together a planning guide to get you started. Come check it out-so easy and fun!

Are your students using your makerspace and now you want to show off their hard work? Host a Maker Walk. Picture a science fair, but so much cooler because it’s filled with the creations your students made in your makerspace!

This can be done with the school’s makerspace or you can just use the creations your students have created from your classroom’s makerspace (like us),

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What Goes in a Makerspace?

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Check out this great list of imakerspace supplies to fill your makerspace! Get creative and have some fun. The best part is that you probably already have so many things in our list. Come read it!

You’ve decided to have a makerspace because you understand the value of the learning that can take place. If you aren’t quite sure, maybe you should go back to our post: Why Should You Build Makerspaces Immediately? It talks about the reasons a makerspace can be valuable in your school or classroom.

What should you put in it? Anything you want. Start small. We put out origami paper and a book during the first week just to see what would happen. (Turns out the answer to that question is lots of paper frogs.) But seriously, we made a list of potential makerspace supplies.

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