Tag Archives: place based learning

Using Visual Arts to Explore Local Community (M4P4)

Teachers for Social Justice published a lesson that facilitates students connecting with their local community. This is important for students to explore their own identities, their relations to others, and a sense of place. The lesson uses Bryan Collier’s book Uptown as a visual example of the art project (video of the book below).

https://youtu.be/7eJFJjQsTy4

This lesson is geared towards younger elementary students (grades 2 and 3), but I see the potential for this to be adapted for older students in digital media and photography classes. To begin, you could start by learning about media literacy through an anti-bias, anti-racist lens. The Association for Media Literacy has a useful framework for this. This would set the foundation for a “Reading the Street” activity during the community exploration, where students would experientially learn that media includes the environments around them, conveying ideologies and implications. The project can culminate with a digital collage project using computer programs such as Photoshop or Krita (free). To go even further, students could animate their collages using a program like After Effects, or make it interactive (such as clicking certain parts triggering an audio clip) using Adobe Animate (click here for an example, from ETEC 540’s “What’s in Your Bag?” assignment)

Other lessons on Teachers for Social Justice website that look promising:

Project of Heart (M4P1)

Project of Heart is an artistic inquiry into the history of Indigenous people in Canada and the legacies of the Indian Residential Schools (IRS). Though open to all Canadians, it is geared towards schools and students. The website is organized by Province to help provide local context and resources. 

The project’s framework includes 6 steps:

  1. Investigate the History and Legacy of Residential Schools in Canada
  2. Look closer at a specific IRS in your local area, including whose territory it is located on and the children taken to the school
  3. Create a gesture of Reconciliation
  4. Survivor Visit
  5. Social Justice Action
  6. Finishing Up Project of the Heart

For Step 3, the website gives several suggestions for projects, from their traditional commemorative wooden tiles to crafting feather wreaths or writing a song. The provincial pages also provide blog-rolls with examples from schools. An approach that I think would be interesting is a collaborative mosaic. Ideally, this would be done in collaboration with a local Indigenous artist who would create the overall design and perhaps teach the students some art lessons. For examples of Collaborative Mosaics, check out Jen Jolliff‘s school ones, and the Global Roots Project.

M4P2: SFU Museum of Archeology and Ethnology

My focus for the final module has been on local sources that can enhance my students’ understanding of the area around them. Given my school’s proximity to Simon Fraser University (SFU), there are many resources that directly relate to this subject. SFU’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology is primarily designed to be enjoyed in person. With COVID, however, the museum has shifted to creating online content for educators, the majority of which relates to First Nations culture (though not all). While the site offers many resources, of particular note is the Tse’K’wa history of project that raises some interesting discussion around archeology and who owns what.

Module 4 – Post 2

Alberta Grasslands: A World at Your Feet is a teacher resource put together by Alberta Environment. This guide is aimed for grades 7-9 and the focus of the guide is to provide resource material focused at, “Increasing students awareness, understanding, and appreciation for the native grassland ecosystem of Alberta.” Within the resource students are introduced to the history, biology and geography of the grasslands of Alberta. This resource also discusses, The Ways of the Aboriginal People as well as Aboriginal Uses of Plants, both of which would work well within a place based lesson plan. Teachers will have access to posters to help introduce students to the landscape with embedded information about the grasslands, as well as a Teacher’s Guide with Activity Masters. The resource guide focuses on six learning objectives: learn about Alberta’s geological formation, study aboriginal connections to the grasslands, discover the inter-relationships of grassland organisms, learn about basic grassland ecological processes,  explore current environmental issues and  apply new knowledge to conserve and protect the environment.

Access to pdf document:  https://www.albertapcf.org/rsu_docs/grasslands_teacher_guide_march2005.pdf

Alberta Environment. (2005). Alberta grasslands: A world at your feet. Alberta Environment. 

 

M.4 P.4 Learning in Places

Universities and schools have partnered to create more culturally and community-relevant, field-based learning opportunities to “engage students in complex ecological reasoning and decision-making”. This resource contains detailed lesson plans to work through a storyline that is “intentionally designed to support learners to engage in wonderings and science that matters in the places they live – from their own homes to neighborhood blocks, to schoolyards, parks, and beyond.”

We co-design innovative research and practice with educators, families, and community partners that cultivates equitable, culturally based, socio-ecological systems learning and sustainable decision-making utilizing “field-based” science education in outdoor places, including gardens, for children in Kindergarten to 3rd grade and their families.

“Learning Engagements” aka Lesson Plans are provided to work through this storyline. Lesson plans can be downloaded that include planning guides and learning tools, as well as data collection protocols. I believe this resource is useful to dissect and make connections with land-based learning, a fundamental principle in traditional ecological knowledge. The importance of PLACE in these lessons is apparent, a theme that has been continually present over the duration of this course. I think these lessons are not only tangible resources for educators to use to promote place-based AND land-based learning.

“…immersing students in outdoor, field-based science learning is a critical and under-utilized strategy for preparing students to wrestle with issues of socio-ecological justice such as food sustainability and water usage.”

References

Seasonal Storyline. (2021). Learning in Places. Retrieved July 13, 2021. http://learninginplaces.org/seasonal-storyline/classroom-storyline/

M3P2: Location and Minecraft

The importance of location was highlighted in this module, and I was inspired by the Anishinaabe World in Minecraft, a collaborative project between the Louis Reil Foundation and Microsoft, that “honours, celebrates and explores a Manitoba Anishinaabe community” (Minecraft Anishinaabe World, n.d.). It made me wonder if a similar project could be created that reflects the locality of First Nations on whose territories my school resides. To that end, the Cobblestone Collective offered a more in-depth look at Minecraft and the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge through an Elder led three-part session. The sessions focused on local plants, medicines, traditions that guided cultural practice and allowed students to engage in an immersive experience. It was full of relevant information for an educator looking to expand their use of Minecraft to remove the colonizing focus while responding to the cultural knowledge of their students.

Cobblestone Project three part series: https://cobblestonecollective.ca/manito-ahbee-aki-minecraft-education-edition/

References:

Minecraft Anishinaabe World. Louis Riel School Division. (n.d.). https://www.lrsd.net/What-We-Offer/Pages/Minecraft-Anishinaabe-World.aspx.

First Nations Traditional Foods of BC- M3 P2

This is a great resource for any teacher in BC looking for land based connections.  This could easily be connected to Outdoor Ed/PE if the students are going on walks to find the food items (maybe not moose, but hopefully some of the plants?), or connected to science/PHE/Nutrition when looking at the nutritional facts of each item.  While this is a general list for all of BC, I’m sure you could connect them with any specific region of BC.  This would be a very safe resource for a teacher just trying to start out as it has tons of great, easy to use information.

BC Traditional Food Fact sheet

I connected this to the Okanagan College Indigenous Garden, which would also be a great learning opportunity for leaners in the Okanagan.

https://www.okanagan.bc.ca/story/nakwulamn-garden 

Module 3 – Post 5

Stepping Stones – I have shared the Alberta Teachers’ Association Walking Together Project in the first module but did not discuss the Stepping Stones publications that are also available from that project. The Stepping Stones helps to support teachers to learn and understand First Nations, Métis and Inuit Foundational Knowledge competencies. One Stepping Stone publication that I wanted to focus in on is the one on Traditional Plants. This publication would be a great resource to help teachers weave in traditional plants into their place based lessons. The publication discusses different types of plants and their uses and even goes further to discuss smudging. One question that stood out from the publication was: How does understanding traditional plants and uses assist educators to build respectful relationships and create inclusive environments?

Alberta Teachers Association. (January, 2019). Walking Together Project. Stepping Stones: First Nations traditional plants and uses. Retrieved from: https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/For%20Members/ProfessionalDevelopment/Walking%20Together/PD-WT-16i%20-%209%20First%20Nations%20Traditional%20Plants%20and%20Uses-2019%2001%2028.pdf

 

Module 3 – Post 3

Hear the land speak, learn Indigenous ways, be embraced by Mother Earth, news article and YouTube video from the University of Calgary is a few years old but still relevant to the topic of Place Based Learning. The article and video both explain how a group of University of Calgary’s Werkland School of Education undergraduate students were invited to explore the sacred land of Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park. The land is, “A very personal place, a space where, for thousands of years, the Blackfoot people have lived and worked, celebrated and mourned – a place for worshipping and a place that is worshipped.”  I found this article very fitting with the past week’s Discussion 9 conversation that brought up Indigenous courses for university students. These students had a great opportunity to learn about the Blackfoot culture and history from Blackfoot Elder Randy Bottle. This experience allowed the students to learn the stories of Elder Bottles’ people, as well as their history and connection to the land. Elder Bottles says, “The land does speak to you, you just have to listen and to be very observant.” The students experienced floating down the river, hiking to the hoodoos, seeing the petroglyphs and learned about the significance of the land to the Blackfoot people. Within the article is a video of some of the students sharing their hands-on learning experience through a sharing circle. One quote really stood out for me, “It’s one thing to read about Indigenous culture in books, but it’s a whole other thing to be in the space and to learn from someone who is as knowledgeable as Elder Bottle.”

Werkland School of Education. (2017, November, 23). Writing on stone sharing circle. Werkland School of Education. [Video].YouTube. https://youtu.be/2KxpaclaMiI

University of Calgary. (2017, Nov. 23). Hear the land speak, learn Indigenous ways, be embraced by Mother Earth. UCalgary News. https://ucalgary.ca/news/hear-land-speak-learn-indigenous-ways-be-embraced-mother-earth

 

Module 3 – Post 1

While looking around for resources, I came across the Building Brains Together website. It was a resource that had been previously shared within my school division. The main mission of the Building Brains website is, “to build adult capabilities to improve brain development and executive functions in children through research and education.” The part of the website that drew me to take a closer look was the area on Resources. Under the resource links, you can find Blackfoot Songs as well as Indigenous Games. Each song is shared in a video format and the games are a mixture of video and written instructions on how to play. 

I wanted to take a closer look at these resources to see how their songs and games could fit with my project focus of Place Based Learning. The interesting part with the resource links is that the individual that helped to organize the creation and development of the songs and games is Mary Ellen Little Mustache who used to be an Educational Assistant at one of the schools in my school division. One quote stood out to me under the acknowledgement of the Indigenous Games resource and that was, “The Indigenous Games takes all people into account with great consideration to recognize other’s beliefs and practices. There isn’t a right way or wrong way to play the games, just different ways that reflect different societies.” I found it very powerful as a way to build in Indigenous culture into Place Based Learning. 

Building Brains Together

Building Brains Together, (n.d.). Blackfoot children’s songs. Building Brains Together. https://www.buildingbrains.ca/blackfoot-songs

Building Brains Together, (n.d.). Indigenous games. Building Brains Together. https://www.buildingbrains.ca/indigenous-games