• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

  • Engaging Lessons
  • Teaching Strategies
  • Classroom Tips
  • Free Resources
  • Shop
  • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy

UDL

How to Leverage Critical Thinking Challenges to Your Advantage

by BrainNinjasWP

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.

[Read more…] about How to Leverage Critical Thinking Challenges to Your Advantage

Filed Under: Engaging Lessons, Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Challenges, Critical Thinking, Differentiation, Multiple Means of Engagement, Problem Solving, Professional Learning, Teachers Pay Teachers, TpT Products, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

How to Host a Maker Walk

by BrainNinjasWP

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),

[Read more…] about How to Host a Maker Walk

Filed Under: Classroom Tips Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Holidays and Seasonal, Learning Commons, Makerspace, Multiple Means of Engagement, steam, stem, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

How to Differentiate Using Choices

by BrainNinjasWP

Sometimes all students need to feel successful is the chance to make a choice so they feel like they have some control. Come learn how to leverage choices and boost your students' engagement.

How would you feel if you knew you were a wonderful writer but the only way you could express yourself was through modern dance? What would you do if you had to recite your report card comments by memory to each and every parent? How would you feel if you were given the choice to write your report cards any way YOU want? (Ours would be invisible!)

Imagine how different your life would be if you were given the choice to do or say certain things.

[Read more…] about How to Differentiate Using Choices

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Classroom Management, Differentiated Instruction, Differentiation, Multiple Means of Engagement, Teachers Pay Teachers, TpT Products, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

How to Create a Community Culture in Your Multi-Grade Classroom

by BrainNinjasWP

How do you teach a split class or combined grades? Start by combining your students into a culture where they get to know each other and create a classroom community that your students will love.

How do we create a community culture where all students feel they are equal and belong? It turns out we’ve had more combined-grade classes than straight-grade classes since we began teaching, so we can’t imagine teaching any other way. First of all, we call it a combined class rather than a split class. It’s the first thing we do with parents because our combined classes are not like the old ‘split’ classes.

When students come into our classroom on the first day of school, they immediately collect into two different groups-the lower grade and upper grade. They don’t know each other well and like to sit with their friends. We don’t give students a seating plan right away (or sometimes at all) so we can see which relationships form or are already in place, but then we slowly start changing their mindset about the combined class.

[Read more…] about How to Create a Community Culture in Your Multi-Grade Classroom

Filed Under: Classroom Tips Tagged With: Back to School, Classroom Community, Classroom Management, Classroom Set Up, combined grades, Differentiation, Inclusion, Professional Learning, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

The Reasons For Project-Based Learning

by BrainNinjasWP

Do you want to try project-based learning in your classroom, but you aren't sure where to start? Check out this post that helps you get started with some simple projects and activities to get you started. We've even added a free planning page to get you on your way.

Project-based learning can be a challenge because it moves the control from the teacher to the student. When we began our teaching journey, controlling every aspect of student work from beginning to end seemed like the right thing to do. As we’ve evolved as teachers, we learned that loosening the reigns has many benefits. Check out some of the best reasons we use project-based learning in our classroom.

[Read more…] about The Reasons For Project-Based Learning

Filed Under: Teaching Strategies Tagged With: Alberta science, Differentiation, Fur Trade, Hudson's Bay, Inclusion, Multiple Means of Engagement, New France, PBL, Professional Learning, Project Based Learning, science, Science Lessons, Sky Science, Social Studies, Teachers Pay Teachers, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

Use the Learning Pit to Teach Growth Mindset

by BrainNinjasWP

Do your students struggle with giving up as soon as the work gets challenging? Do they lack determination or grit? This is one of the best lessons we ever learned and we regularly use it with our students to show them how to embrace a growth mindset. Come learn about the learning pit.

Have you been learning about growth mindset and wanting to try to instill some determination in your students? Have you heard of the learning pit? It might be the key to teaching students to learn how to learn.

Do you have students that break down during tasks that require a bit of problem-solving? Are they frustrated? Do they yell and scream or run out of the classroom? You need the learning pit.

Teaching students to overcome challenges can be difficult when we live in a society that is all about getting things done quickly. We have technology, parents and constant distractions constantly telling students they can learn anything anytime with little or no effort. As a teacher, this is very challenging when students feel they’ve failed, get frustrated or give up right away.

This was what was happening in our classroom. Students who could manage challenges were more successful overall because they kept working until they got it. It felt like it was a lack of effort, but it was much more than that. So we started investigating and researching best practices to help us teach students to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

[Read more…] about Use the Learning Pit to Teach Growth Mindset

Filed Under: Classroom Tips Tagged With: Differentiation, Growth Mindset, Inclusion, James Nottingham, Multiple Means of Engagement, Professional Learning, Self-Regulation, Special Education, The Learning Pit, UDL, Universal Design for Learning

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Most Recent

  • Teaching students to measure capacity can be a fun and engaging hands-on activity for your upper elementary math class. Come learn about some of the different ways we help our students learn to measure capacity in metric units.
    Five Amazing Capacity Quests to Enliven Your Classroom
    Teaching students how to calculate capacity...
  • There are lots of fun ways to explore perimeter measurement in your upper elementary classroom and we've written up a whole post full of our favourite ideas. Come read it today!
    Love Math and Explore Perimeter With Your Young Mathematicians
    When people ask, "When will I...
  • Instead of teaching poetry in a unit, have you ever considered sprinkling poetry throughout the school year? It's a great way to show students that poetry is all around us. Come learn about some of the ways we include poetry in our language arts lessons throughout the year.
    How to Teach Poetry All Year Long
    Many teachers add a poetry unit...

Before Footer

Looking for something?

Footer

Copyright © 2025 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptReject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT