One of the truths that came out of our discussions the past two weeks has been that southern teachers teaching in northern, indigenous communities feel ill-prepared to incorporate indigenous culture into their teaching. The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Education (OISE) has compiled a list of teaching resources, links and lesson plans for its teacher candidates, specifically on how to integrate aboriginal studies seamlessly into the Ontario curriculum.

This link will take you to a video clip of one teacher candidate, Nathan Goold, who developed a unit on Aboriginal perspectives for a Kindergarten class. One of the difficulties Goold faced during his planning was a lack of resources geared at the Kindergarten level. He discovered that most resources were aimed at students in Grade 5, since that is when the Ontario curriculum requires indigenous studies. Nevertheless, Goold was able to find two picture books that tied into indigenous culture and he found that his students were able to comprehend the cultural elements within them. He hopes that he has laid the ground-work for future learning about the culture.

As one follow-up activity, Goold had his class prepare and taste bannock. Food is always a great way to make learning engaging and memorable, and tasty! For Goold’s full lesson plan, click here: Nathan_Goold_-_Making_Bannok_with_Recipe.