Ninja Notes

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Lesson Plans

Find the Fake News and So Much More

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We need to teach students how to think critically about what they see online. Check out these tips and lessons you can use in your clasroom to help turn your students in to responsible digital citizens. Digital citizenship and online safety should be a priority in every upper elementary classroom.

We realized the importance of teaching critical thinking and fact-checking one day on Facebook. One ninja-mother-in-law posted an article about an actor that had died-but the actor had died FIVE years earlier. Yet, there she was just reposting like crazy. A dog with a piece of ham on its face was her next post and that was when we started writing our digital citizenship and online safety resource. Clearly, digital citizenship is a skill to be learned by many these days.

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How to Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day

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Are you looking for ways to celebrate a love of poetry with your upper elementary students? Try taking part in Poem in Your Pocket Day as part of National Poetry Month. This can be done any time of year and is a great activity to explore poetry throughout your school. Come read the whole post to get ideas how you can celebrate poetry.

We’re hosting a “Poem in Your Pocket” day as a celebration of completing our poetry unit in Language Arts. It coincides with the National Poem In Your Pocket Day held each year in April. It’s coming up soon! You can join us this year even if you haven’t taught poetry in your classroom yet!

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The Truth About New Math

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What is new math and why does everyone keep talking about it? Here is what we tell parents about new math (spoiler alert-math isn't new). Get some practical tips for debunking the math myths.

New math is ruining education. Or at least this is what we keep hearing people (like parents, the media, and politicians) say.

What is this “new math” of which you speak?  I see the memes on Facebook and wonder, have I been teaching mathematics wrong? Has it changed? Did I miss an email about this?

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How to Explore Métis Storytelling Through Indigenous Art Lessons

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If you are looking for a great art lesson for painting that explores Indigenous art lessons, you should try this one out. Lots of suggestions on how to use your art once you're done is included too.

This is a lesson we’ve done with our students for years partly because it never fails to create stunning artwork and because it’s fun to do. Students always love it. Artists always study the work of other artists to learn techniques. This art project celebrates Indigenous artists by studying and creating new works inspired by Indigenous art lessons.

Come check out how we create these stunning pieces of art (which aren’t nearly as difficult as you might think) based on Indigenous art lessons.

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How to Shock Your Students With Engaging Electricity Lessons

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Are you looking for lessons and activities you can use to teach electricity concepts? We pulled together our favourite activities to save you time looking for them. Come take a look at these electricity lessons for your upper elementary science class.

As ninjas, we are always looking for ways to teach our students new skills like problem-solving and critical thinking without the students KNOWING we are teaching them skills like problem-solving and critical thinking. We love project-based learning, and electricity lessons are a great unit to practice some hands-on learning.

We give our students just enough information to be safe and get working on a project. Our students get so wrapped up in their projects that they don’t even notice they are learning. That’s why we’re the Brain Ninjas, and that’s why you need to try it, too!

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