Writing Prompts

End the School Year With Lasting Memories

Are you looking for ways to celebrate the school year with your students? We've collected some of the best ways we spend the last month of school in our upper elementary classroom (and of course we're still learning right up until the end). Come check out these ideas.

Every group of students you teach over the years will leave a special place in your heart. The names and faces might fade a little or get mixed up as the years pile up, but there are always some groups, names and faces that will stick with you. We try to make the end of each year special for our students. For some, the end of the year is a joyous occasion, but for others, it’s sad and summer break is not always wonderful for them. Here are some of the ways we end the school year in special ways to create lasting memories.

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10 Quick Ways to Celebrate World Kindness Day

by Brain Ninjas

World Kindness Day is a way to remind each other to be kind, but we focus on being kind all year in our classroom. Come learn some of the ways we celebrate kindness in our upper elementary and especially for World Kindness Day.

World Kindness Day is observed on November 13th. It’s a great opportunity to promote kindness, empathy, and compassion in your classroom, school, and community. One of the most important lessons about kindness is that it is possible for everyone to be kind. It doesn’t have to cost money or take a lot of time. Here are some of the ways we celebrate World Kindness Day in our school.

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Last Minute Substitute Teacher Ideas When Plans Fall Through

by Brain Ninjas

If you are a substitute teacher and the plans have fallen through, you need this post full of ideas. We cannot recommend planning for the worst more, but this post will get you through the start of day until things get sorted out. Come read it!

Have you been hired as a substitute teacher at the last minute? Are there no substitute teacher plans in place or you can’t find them? We pulled together this list of activities you can use to get your day sorted out. Most of the activities are designed for upper elementary, but you might be able to adapt them for your group of students.

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How to Have Snow Much Fun With These Snow Activities

by Brain Ninjas

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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Spring Classroom Activities To Make You Bloom

by Brain Ninjas

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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Free Winter Classroom Activities Worth Scooping Up

by Brain Ninjas

Snowman sculptures made of clay and craft materials by students.

Depending on where you live, winter can be a very long season. In northern Canada, where we teach, winter can start as early as October. It continues up to the end of March. That means we are always on the lookout for winter classroom activities to use in class. More importantly, we use them during those dreaded indoor recesses when it is just too cold to go outside.

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Enlightening Resources to Celebrate Diwali in the Classroom

by Brain Ninjas

A picture of a watercolour diya. Are you looking for resources to use to celebrate Diwali in the classroom? We put together a list of resources to learn all about the Festival of Lights including a book list, videos and art projects to celebrate. Come have a read!

Diwali is the Festival of Lights. It is also known as Dipawali and it is the most important festival of the year for the Hindu religion. Other religions like Buddhists also celebrate Diwali. While it was traditionally celebrated by Hindus, now it is more widely celebrated by people around the world including by Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Since this celebration is important to many different people around the world, it is very possible you will have students in your classroom who celebrate. To those students, Diwali is as important to them as Christmas is to Christians. Many school districts in Canada have added Diwali to their school calendars. Read on to find resources you can use to celebrate Diwali in the classroom.

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15 Free Activities for the First Month of School

by Brain Ninjas

Are you looking for free activities you can use during the first month of school? We gathered up some of our favourite writing, math, reading, art and classroom community activities just for you. Best of all, they're all free! Come check it out!

The first month of school is filled with so many new adventures. There is so much to do regarding setting up classroom routines. We don’t start teaching content until a few weeks into the school year. Up until that time, we see what our students can do. We generally assess reading and writing, and review math. This is a great way to get to know your students so you can plan your lessons for their needs. Here are nine free activities we use for the first month of school.

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How to Include Different Types of Writing in Your Classroom

by Brain Ninjas

Are you looking for ways to include the different types of writing in your classroom each day? Come see how we do it in our upper elementary classroom.

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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9 Easy Valentine’s Day Ideas for Upper Elementary

by Brain Ninjas

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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Challenge Your Students with Writing Activities

by Brain Ninjas

Are you looking for some ways to get your upper elementary students writing every day? We've created this list full of ideas, resources and time-savers so your students can write something every single day. We've even got a few free writing ideas that you can take straight to your classroom. Come take a read!

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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Gift Festive Christmas Classroom Activities to Your Students

by Brain Ninjas

You know that week in December when you’re constantly called down to the auditorium for concert rehearsals, some of your students are away sick, some have left for vacation early, and you have to keep a classroom full of excited kids busy? Do you need some Christmas classroom activities to solve the problem?

Christmas is fun and all, but it’s so hard to keep kids interested in learning, and it’s a challenging time to introduce new concepts with all those interruptions. What’s a teacher to do?

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