This week we focused on the themes of diversity and Indigenous knowledge. Students explored both these topics through fun and interesting lenses included diversity-related colouring sheets and picture books, as well as hands-on art activities and guest presentations. This week, we also celebrated the first day of March!
This week, we were able to visit Mrs. Peterson's grade 6/7 class and tour their "museum" of projects! Our class got to explore different projects about ancient civilizations and novel studies. They got to ask questions, see and touch artifacts, and learn from their older peers. This was a great learning opportunity and students really enjoyed it!
We also read a number of picture books about the topic of diversity, including a book titled "We All Belong", and a few others that represented different cultures and the adjustment students coming from far away countries face when they reach North America. As we read these, stories we discussed diversity, as well as practiced predicting and inferring.
As a class, we had a discussion on how we can show diversity in our class/school and this followed this up with an art activity. We practiced our colour mixing to make paint that best matched our individual skin tones and then we made handprints to create a poster that represents our class diversity. The students really enjoyed this activity and I can't wait for us to display it in our class for the rest of the year!
Finally, we were lucky enough to have our school’s Aboriginal Support Worker, Ms. Chloe, come into our class and teach us all about Indigenous spirit animals. She read us a book called “Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox”, and students participated in the story with hand puppets of the animal characters. Then, we learned about spirit animals in Indigenous culture and students got to share their spirit animal based on what they thought they could learn from this animal. Finally, students created animal masks to represent a few of the spirit animals. Students were even able to use real wool from Ms. Chloe’s sheep. This was an amazing learning opportunity as well as a fun, hands-on activity! I know the class will definitely remember this one!
Have a great week!
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