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Ninja Notes

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Mathematics

Amazing Measurement Activities to Stretch Math

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Are you looking for measurement activities to spice up your math lessons? We collected all our favourite ideas for our upper elementary classroom and put it all together for you. Come have a read and get your math class class planned in minutes.

Measurement is one of those math strands that requires lots of hands-on activities and practice. While students can learn about the different measurements and units through learning about them, it essentially takes a lot of practice measuring to really understand how all the measurements work together.

We have found that a combination of book learning and reference materials supports students while they use units to measure different items. Read on to learn about some of the different measurement activities we use to help students master the metric system (and other units of measurement).

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How to Teach Students to Tell Time

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Teaching time can be a stressfull situation in math class. How do you teach your students to tell time? We've put together all our activities for reading clocks, understanding the 12 Hour and 24 Hour clock, AM/PM, elapsed time and calendars. Come add these activities to your time lessons!

Teaching students to tell time is a necessary and difficult challenge, but time lessons are a life skill.

Some people argue that reading analog clocks is a skill that is slowly disappearing. Perhaps one day, digital clocks will completely take over, but for now, they are still around, causing grief for teachers and students around the world during time lessons in math class.

Come learn some of the activities we use to help our students learn to read the time with these time lessons that will save you time.

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Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom

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Spring is here and we have collected our favourite spring classroom activities to help you get through spring fever. Come read our list a get some ideas you can use right away.

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.

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How to Differentiate Math Lessons

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What is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons? Come learn some of the ways we streamlin differentiation in our upper elementary classroom.

Differentiated instruction is expected of most classroom teachers these days. Long gone are the times when one worksheet could be given to every member of the class and they would all work on that page until every question was done correctly. Since the pandemic began, the once manageable (pause for laughter here) learning gaps between students have gotten even worse. So what is a teacher to do when there are such vast differences in skill levels during math class? How do you differentiate math lessons?

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How to Teach Successful Long Division Strategies

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Do your upper elementary students struggle with long division? We've collected all our best tools for helping students master long division and you can have them all. Come read this post and see how we can help your students feel better about math.

Long division has long been one of the most challenging concepts for students in Grade 4 and Grade 5 to master. There are a few reasons students struggle with long division, so we’ve tried to break down some of the ways we set our students up for success.

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9 Easy Valentine’s Day Ideas for Upper Elementary

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Valentine's Day in upper elementary isn't quite the same as the little kids or the older ones. It's this weird time in a kid's life where they are too old to care about paper cards but also want to be included in getting paper cards. They are just starting to have crushes but the maturity level is all over the place. We've spent a lot of time watching our Valentine's Day ideas flop. Come read some of our students' approved Valentine's Day ideas.

Valentine’s Day in upper elementary isn’t quite the same as the little kids or the older ones. It’s this weird time in a kid’s life when they are too old to care about paper cards but also want to be included in getting paper cards. They are just starting to have crushes but their maturity level is all over the place. We’ve spent a lot of time watching our Valentine’s Day ideas flop. But not anymore!

Over the years, we’ve watched students in our Grade 4 and Grade 5 classes to see how they respond to different activities for Valentine’s Day and we’ve settled on focusing on friendship and kindness. Some of these activities can be done any time of year because they are not specific to Valentine’s Day. These are the best Valentine’s Day ideas that were approved by our students.

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