Incorporating the stories and culture of Indigenous people is important to us. It’s woven throughout our subject areas, but we often look for other places to provide opportunities to bring cultures together. Some years we’ve had several students who share their Cree and Dene cultures with us. Other years we’ve had no one in our classroom with a direct connection to our Indigenous people. We want all of our students to feel connected to the history of our country and the people who were here first.
[Read more…] about How to Bring Indigenous Culture into Your Art LessonsAboriginal People of Canada
How to Explore Métis Storytelling Through Indigenous Art Lessons

This is a lesson we’ve done with our students for years partly because it never fails to create stunning artwork and because it’s fun to do. Students always love it. Artists always study the work of other artists to learn techniques. This art project celebrates Indigenous artists by studying and creating new works inspired by Indigenous art lessons.
Come check out how we create these stunning pieces of art (which aren’t nearly as difficult as you might think) based on Indigenous art lessons.
[Read more…] about How to Explore Métis Storytelling Through Indigenous Art LessonsHow to Bring Social Studies to Life

If you’ve ever had an amazing teacher who brought history to life for you, then you probably enjoyed learning. A great teacher throws away the social studies textbook. He or she allows students to explore history in real and relevant ways. This teaches about the past, but also how to learn and think critically about the future.
We love teaching social studies, but honestly, we very rarely teach it using the textbook. For one thing, it’s a pretty condensed and cleansed version of the past. The reading level is way above our students’ comprehension skills. We use the textbooks as reference materials only.
That means we need to have a way to bring social studies alive for our students.
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