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This book bundle is listed on the Strong Nations website, it is a bundle that features books, artwork, cards and stuffies all related to Indigenous outdoor education. Althought the bundle is quite expensive, you can buy individual parts of the bundle, or you could try and source them at your school library. Outdoor education and learning about the land is a great way to bring Indigenous ways of knowing into your classroom. It can be very holistic, encorporating the mind, body and spirit through exploration of the outdoor world.

Classroom Ideas:

One of the book included in this bundle talks about the four seasons, this could be a great resource for talking to the students about weather and change of seasons!

This book “Two Tricksters Find Friendship” is written by Jess Willows and Elder Johnny Aitken from Mayne Island and Illustrated by Alyssa Koski of Blackfoot ancestary. It follows the story of two friends Jessie and Johnny and their spiritual guide the Raven who follows along on their journey. The book is broken down into chapters, each chapter exploring different Indigenous practices, ways of thinking or topics that involve reconcilliation. It also shows a very real and lived experience of systemic differences in class between Indigenous and white people living in Canada, Jessie comes from a well off family and never worries about money where as Johnny lives on the reserve with his family and often experiences troubles financially. This book is a great resource for sharing Indigenous stories and practices with student’s in a way that they can resonate with and understand, the chapters style book is great as you can use this as a continuing book throughout the year. Jess and Johnny are currently working on another book that will cater more towards older students in middle school and covers topics seen in Indigenous communities such as trauma and how that can produce habits such as addiction and abuse.

Classroom Idea:

As the book is split up into chapters this could be a great book to read during snack breaks or lunch, reading one chapter each time! At the end of each chapter the teacher could facilitate a classroom discussion about what new things students learnt from this chapter and ask if they have any questions about what they learnt. The teacher could then take the students questions and find some content or answers to the students questions and share it with the class.

The resource shared is a physical book called “Phyllis and Her Orange Shirt” that many of the school districts have in their libraries but it can also be purchased online or at Indigo books. The story is a story written by a residential school survivor and it follows the story of Phyllis Webstad as a young girl being sent to a residential school. Phyllis is from British Columbia and went to residential school in Mission, BC. When she arrived her orange shirt that she was wearing was taken from her and she never saw it again. The story talks about loss and focuses alot on how when these people took things from her she felt very sad. Many use this resource as a way to talk about loss and acknowledge all the other orange shirts that never made it home. I think this resource is a great way to stay true to the meaning of Orange Shirt Day while remianing age appropriate and concious of the community. This resource link is a video of Phyllis Webstad speaking about her story.

Classroom Idea:

This book would be a good book to read in September to prepare for Truth & Reconcilliation day. It is important to remember that talking about Truth & Reconcilliation day with young students could be overwhelming or potentially retraumatizing for students and their families. This book is a great way to get the message of loss across to students, while remaining age appropriate in content. After reading the book in class you could talk briefly with the students about how it feels when you lose something and how on Orange Shirt day we honour all of those feelings people have when they lose something they love.

This resource Octavia Cayenne Pepper is an Indegnous AI section of Chat GPT. It uses Indigenous content and ways of thinking to answer questions. I asked it “How to incorporate Indigenous ways of thinking in Math for Grade 1-2‘s and it gave me a list of idea’s on how to do so such as counting what the land offers like stones, leaves, bird calls, etc. This could be a great resource when lesson planning or to question if your lesson offers meaningful Indigenous content as opposed to just checking a box off. I played around with this resource quite a bit and I found the responses were very thought provoking and rooted in Indigenous ways of thinking. One thing to note as with any AI is that it is subjective and not always accurate, if you are ever unsure about Indigenous content or materials it is good to check with your Indigenous advocate at your school.

Teacher Idea:

This resource can be used to help check the appropriateness of encorporating Indiegnous content in your lesson plans. It often offers suggestions such as “what to do/what not to do” to ensure we are not sharing information that is not ours to share, or sharing content in a meaningful way.

This resource is a physical resource that is offered by the Indigenous Education Department at SD61. You can borrow the bins which have all of the Spirit of Alliance resources. The bin comes with information about the Bear, the Raven, the Wolf and the Salmon. This helps children understand the importance of these spiritual animals and learn their stories. The SD61 website offers teaching guides on how to bring this into the classroom, as well as encourage using the new and old images of each Spirit in the classroom.

Classroom Idea:

This could be used as apart of doing identity work with your students, allowing children to understand the characteristic of each animal and get them to identify themeselves as an animal that they felt closely matched their identity. A fun art project you could bring into the classroom is getting the student to make their animal out of air dry clay and have the students do a little write up about the characteristics of each animal and what makes them special!

Link to Resource:

The First Voices dictionary is an online Lekwungen dictionary. On the home page of this site there is a featured “word of the day” in Lekwungen, as well as the Lekwungen alphabet. Under the “Dictionary” menu on the main site things are broken up into phrases, words, categories and alphabet. A really interesting feature that they have on this site is the kids section. It is really interactive and features some fun learning games. It looks like they also have a section for songs and stories however nothing is uploaded yet. This could be a great website to use in the classroom, you could give each child an IPad and have them go through the kids section to learn Lekwungen words and their meanings.

Classroom Idea:

Lekwungen word of the week! For this, each week the teacher would pick a Lekwungen word to focus on and write it on the board. You could start by picking basic language like tətél̓šən which means hello, listen to the pronounciation and practice saying it with the students every morning. The teacher could also pick words and try to relate it to a lesson for that week. For example you could use the word qə́čəqs which is the word for coho or silver salmon as you do a unit on salmon!