Lesson 2- Reviewing and Solidifying

Aboriginal Perspective: Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).

From The First Peoples’ Principles of Learning

  Lesson Objectives:

To introduce students to the ideas that:

  1. Lessons can be found in nature.
  2. Indigenous peoples associate animals with different characteristics.
  3. Learning to think like these animals will help us be better, healthier and more mindful individuals.

Materials:

  • The Six Cedar Trees (book)
  • Sort 1 – 3 Six Cedar Animal Sorts(Click Here)

Lesson

 Hook: Play “Who am I?” as a class, to activate students’ prior learning.

Example: I am the great communicator. I teach others to cooperate, listen to one another and respect others’ ideas. Who am I? (Wolf)

Revisit and Retell the story– Invite students to the carpet and take a Gallery Walk through the book. Remind students that good readers can retell a story using the pictures. As you retell the story, ask students about each animal. Who can tell me what ___________ teaches us?

Create an anchor chart that shows all seven animals. Label the chart with each animal descriptor and make reference to this chart throughout your day and week. (Notice, Name and Nurture?)

Invite students to complete the Animal sort (Sort 1 and 2).

Play “Who am I?” as a class using the descriptors from Sort 3.

Note:  I had my students repeat the sorting activity with their partner several times a week for two weeks. By the end of two weeks, they knew each animal well.

Also, Sort 3 includes some tricky language that needs to be unpacked. I played “Who am I?” using Sort 3 language so many times that my Grade 2’s knew the words by rote, even if decoding was difficult. “Who am I?” was a big hit for my students who bounced in their seats to reveal the answer.