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When you live in a winter climate like northern Canada, the opportunities to do activities related to snow are endless. We try to build weather-related snow activities into our classes wherever possible. We teach in upper elementary, but we’ve used some of these activities with our younger buddies and some we’ve challenged ourselves. Come check out these snow activities that will keep you busy all winter.
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Do your students struggle with using the correct word when they are writing? Do homophones confuse your students when they are reading? They are not alone. There are more than six thousand different homophones in the English language. No wonder it’s so confusing for students.
Teaching homophones and homographs can be a lot of fun. We’ve collected some of our favourite lessons, books and activities that you can use in your classroom to practice using homonyms. Come read more!
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Over the years we’ve attended hundreds of hours of professional development for teaching students to write. Our school has tried out resources from Ruth Guthrie and the 6+ Traits of Writing, Barbara Mariconda and Empowering Writers and even Lucy Calkins and her Writers’ Workshop model. None of these were perfect. Some students did well with some of the lessons and some students didn’t see a lot of growth in their writing. Some students learned to follow a formula but struggled with being creative. How do you include different types of writing in your daily writing?
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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 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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There are generally two reactions that students give when it is time for writing activities in the classroom. Half are usually excited and the other half is filled with dread. We’ve been through lots of different writing programs over the years, been to hundreds of hours of professional development to teach writing and have seen the same pattern over and over again.
Most teachers don’t feel like they know how to teach writing. Is that you? Keep reading.
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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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