Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Professional Learning

How to Run Your Guided Reading Instruction

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Are you learning to run reading groups in your classroom as part of your reading instruction? Great! Here's what we do during our reading instruction groups in upper elementary.

You’re giving Guided Reading instruction a try. Great! Do you know what you should be doing with your Guided Reading groups and reading instruction? You’re going to teach students to read. But what does that mean?

We teach in upper elementary (usually Grade four or five) which means we have readers in our classroom reading from Grade one through to Grade six. We have English Language Readers, students with learning difficulties, avid readers and all the ones in between. This means we often need to use more than one strategy to teach reading.

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Help! I Don’t Know How to Teach Reading

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Are you being asked to teach reading but you haven't learned how? That's because education programs don't actually teach teachers how to teach reading. This training is usually done on the job, but don't worry. We've got everything you need to get started with guided reading.

Have you been asked to do Guided Reading or teach reading in your classroom, but have absolutely no experience and don’t even know where to start? We’ve been there. Let us share our combined years of experience that took us from beginning teachers to literacy specialists.

This is the beginning of a series that will get you set up to do Guided Reading in your classroom, but honestly, it is a long game. Take the pressure off yourself now because you’ll have to give yourself time to get this whole how to teach reading thing down. We’ve been teaching reading for over fifteen years and there is always room to improve. There are always new things to learn.

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It’s Time to Get Your Emergency Sub Plans Ready

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Are you prepared for a substitute teacher in the event you have to leave your classroom unexpectedly? Get these tips and some templates to make your planning simpler, faster and FINISHED!

Writing emergency sub plans for a supply teacher is a big pain in the butt. Even more so, when some sort of family emergency comes up and you’re still legally responsible for two days of classes (or more depending on where you teach).

It’s strange that these certified teachers who come into our classroom don’t have to plan anything for two full days. At least, that is the rule in the province where we live. Teachers are responsible for leaving two full days of plans for their students regardless of the situation. This must be in the only job in the world where you do just as much work on the days you aren’t there as on the days you are.

I once wrote sub plans on my phone from a hospital bed. True story. And as crazy as that was, I learned a valuable lesson from it.

Emergency Sub Plans!

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The Reasons Your Classroom Management Isn’t Working and How to Fix It

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Are you struggling with your classroom management? Are you out of ideas? Ditch clip charts and rewards and learn how to manage your classroom with strategies that work. Come read the whole post and find some relief!

Recently I was having a discussion with a former student teacher. She had reached out because her last school year felt like a disaster and she was wondering how could improve. She’d tried clip charts, behaviour charts, communication journals, reward baskets and everything else she could think of, but nothing worked. She wanted to know how she could improve her classroom management because she feared she couldn’t last another year. She asked about my secret because she didn’t remember what I did.

Was it that uneventful that she didn’t know what I did? No. Not quite.

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How to Differentiate For Your Students in Less Time

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Learn how to differentiate for your students in less time with these strategies. These are practical ways to take some of the planning off your plate and still provide your students with the supports they need. Come read the whole post.

One of the biggest issues teachers talk about is how much time it takes to differentiate their instruction for the needs of the different learners in their complex classrooms. All teachers want to help, reach and teach all their students, but understanding how to do this can be a challenge especially for teachers who are new to teaching, new to a grade level or new to the types of challenges and barriers a student is facing.

Full Disclosure: Differentiated instruction is hard.

And there seems to be some sort of unwritten out there that everyone should be good at it the first time you try.

Gee, no pressure.

Well, what if we could give you some tried and true strategies that have worked for us? We all know differentiation is important, but what does it mean to truly differentiate for everyone?

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How to Differentiate Your Instruction

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Differetiating your instruction does not mean you need a different lesson plan for every students. Come learn how to differentiate in your classroom without writing a million different plans.

You have a complex classroom full of complex behaviours and learning challenges. Do you worry about how to teach all of them to the best of your ability? Are you spending all your time trying to differentiate instruction but feeling like you’re spinning in circles not getting anywhere?

Differentiation means different things to different people. We’re here to work through the clutter and streamline the planning process. Then you can differentiate for the different learners you have in your classroom without spending all your time planning.

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