Tying it All Together
Instructions: Optional extension project:
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Spring
Our Responsibilities
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to provide more in-depth teachings related to the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace and the Anishinaabe 7 Grandfather Teachings. Instructions: Optional Extension:
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The 13 Moons
An Indigenous community member should be invited into the learning environment to help teach about the 13 Moons. Instructions: Extension:
The Clan System
A local Anishinaabe and/or Kanyen’kehá:ka community member should be invited into the learning environment to help teach students about the Clan System. Instructions:
Ceremony Ensures Right Relations with the Land -Indigenous Knowledge
An Indigenous Knowledge Keeper or community member should be invited in to help to deliver this learning activity. Note that this activity is also included in Learning Activity 8: Ceremony Ensures Right Relationship with the Land in the QUILLS Food Learning Bundle. Instructions: Spotlight on Language: Anishinaabewmowin: Forest Habitat: Mitigwaaking Maple Tree: Ninaatig Maple Ceremony:
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Biodiversity and Contaminants
Instructions: Contaminants in the Environment as a Threat to Biodiversity By reviewing study students learn that bitumen has a powerful impact on many species including wood frogs. This is especially problematic since wood frogs have many important functions in an ecosystem including, helping to control insect populations, acting as a food source, filtering water as
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How Does Language Mirror and Shape Our Relationship to Land?
We recommend inviting an Indigenous language speaker into the learning space when teaching about Indigenous languages. Instructions: Extension Activity: Place Names There are at least 30,000 place names in Canada whose names come from anglicized versions of Indigenous languages.
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Culminating Activity: Becoming a Change Maker
Instructions: Students will contact community leadership about a climate change related issue that they feel is important. Leadership should include local Indigenous community leaders as well as their MP and/or mayor etc. Students will be expected to express their understanding of the issue using drawing on Indigenous land-based and Western Scientific examples. Students will also
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Living in Reciprocity
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to share teachings related to local Indigenous agriculture. Instructions: Depending on the time of the year this Learning Bundle is taught and if/when students grow beans in Learning Activity 10: Western STEM Connection- Engaging with Reciprocity and Interdependence students can engage in seed starting,
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Engaging in Reciprocity to Mitigate the Impact of Climate Change
Instructions: Extension Activity: The Ohèn:ton Karihwatéhkwen Students prepare a “Snapshot of Resistance” focused on the work of a local community member who is fighting to protect Manoomin. Work should include information on the positive impact of wild rice on local habitat (ie: wild rice filters water and provides food and nesting materials for animals such as loons and
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Aquatic Monitoring
This Activity will be Offered at the Elbow Lake Environmental Education Centre. Instructions: Optional Extension Activity: An Indigenous Knowledge Keeper or community member would be invited in to help to deliver this learning activity. The leather can be used as a canvas to create beautiful works of art!
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Utilizing Different Ways of Knowing to Understand & Counteract Climate Change
Instructions: Using Multiple Sources of Knowledge to Investigate Northern Environmental Change: Regional Ecological Impacts of a Storm Surge in the Outer Mackenzie Delta, N.W.T. (Smol, J) https://www.queensu.ca/pearl/media/Dead%20Zone%20project/ Study Summary: This study combined data gathered by environmental scientists with information gathered during workshops with local Indigenous hunters and community members. The Inuvialuit are experts on the delta
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Lakes and Oceans as Sentinels of Climate Change
Instructions: Teacher discusses with students how Western scientists often look to lakes and oceans to understand the impacts of climate change. Oceans play a significant role in understanding and slowing climate change as they are massive heat sinks. Teacher reviews this vocabulary word with students along with atmosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere using the
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Getting to Know Animal Behavior
Instructions: In Bappaasenh Gaa-bi-Njibaad an old woman refuses to offer Weneboozhoo food and water. As a result, the woman turns into a woodpecker who has to work hard to find her own food. This story reminds us to be generous. Anishinaabemowin: Manpii dibaajmowining, maaba bezhig mindimoyenh gii-zaagtamwaan Weneboozhoon miijim miinwaa nibi. Mii dash maaba mindimoyenh
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Western STEM Connection-Engaging with Reciprocity and Interdependence
Instructions: Western STEM Connection: The following study shows the manner in which reduction in precipitation caused by climate change impacts plant biodiversity locally. The study also points to things that can be done to live in reciprocity and interdependence with the natural world ie: watering and using fertilizer: Serafini, J., Grogan, P., and Aarssen, L.
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Ceremony Ensures Right Relations with the Land
An Indigenous Knowledge Keeper or community member should be invited in to help to deliver this learning activity. Instructions: Stories articulating Anishinaabe Maple teachings include: A story discussing Haudenosaunee teachings related to the corn harvest can be found in: Spotlight on Language: Anishinaabewmowin: Forest Habitat: Mitigwaaking Maple Tree: Ninaatig Maple Ceremony: Ziizbaakdoke Giizis Container to collect
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Western STEM Connection- Forest Succession
Instructions: Teacher takes students to three different places outdoors, each representing a different stage of vegetation succession from field to forest. In each space teacher should allow students the opportunity to silently reflect using their five senses and record their observations. For instance, students can record what animals and plants they see? How much light
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Forests as Carbon Sinks
Instructions: Part One: Forests as Carbon Sinks Carbon is an essential building block of life. It is linked to all biotic and abiotic substances on earth. Through multiple diverse carbon cycles within and among organisms and their environment, carbon is constantly being transformed into different molecules. Although carbon is incredibly important to the health and
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Western STEM Connection -Tree Migration
Instructions: Teacher introduces students to study that shows how climate change (caused by not living in reciprocity with the natural world) can change the makeup of a forest. Summary of study found in Subarctic Alpine Tree Line Dynamics.pdf. The following study shows how changing temperatures in arctic and subarctic regions affect the movement and population
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Minds On: Introducing Climate Change
Instructions: The teacher takes students outdoors and asks them to think of an area or green space that they have visited throughout their lives (could be a street, city park, conservation area, etc.). Ask students: In their Outdoor Learning Journals (introduced in Teacher’s Guide) students write about: Teachers then leads a discussion with students regarding the changing climate.
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Interacting with Reciprocity with our Plant Relatives
Instructions: Biotic Elements:
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Culminating Task: Spreading the Word about Invasives
Instructions: Students create:
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Using Fire to Curb the Spread of Invasives
Spotlight on Language: Fire Anishinaabemowin: Shkode Kanyen’kéha: Ó:tsire Indigenous Fire Keeping Activity: Western STEM Connection-Benefits of Fire: Heating with Wood Barto, D., Cziraky, J., Geerts, S., Hack, J., Langford, S., Nesbitt, R., Park, S., Willie, N., Xu, J., and Grogan, P. 2009. An integrated analysis of the use of woodstoves to supplement fossil fuel-fired domestic
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Factors Enabling Invasive Species to Establish and to Thrive
Instructions: Western STEM Connection: Sinclair, J. S., Lockwood, J. L., Hasnain, S., Cassey, P. & Arnott, S. E. (2020) A framework for predicting which non-native individuals and species will enter, survive, and exit human-mediated transport. Biological Invasions, 22(2), 217-231. Sinclair, J. S., & Arnott, S.E. (2017). Relative importance of colonist quantity, quality, and arrival frequency
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Dutch Elm Disease: A Threat to Longhouses and other Building Materials
Instructions: Communicable Disease Lab:
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Phragmites: A Threat to Cattails
Instructions: Discussion: Students discuss the differences they observed in the two conditions and how the introduction of phragmites could affect the native plants and animals in a wetland. Ask students to also consider the potential impact of phragmites on the Indigenous land-based practices that rely on native cattails.
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Tracking Invasives
Instructions: Garlic Mustard: A Threat to Locally Harvested Plants: Colautti, R., Franks, S., Hufbauer, R., Kotanen, P., Torchin, M., Byers, J., Pysek, P., Bossdorf, O. (2014) The Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey (GGMFS): challenges and opportunities of a unique, large-scale collaboration for invasion biology. NeoBiota 21:29-47. doi: 10. 3897/neobiota.21.5242 Colautti, R., Barrett, S. (2013) Rapid
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Invasive Species
Instructions: Review of invasive species Discussion: Invasive plants: can be very harmful to an ecosystem by out-competing native species for resources such as light, moisture and soil nutrients needed by all species to survive and thrive. As a result, species composition can change, affecting wildlife that depend on native plant communities. For example, red-winged blackbirds
Shelter – Wigwams
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment when teaching about wigwams. Instructions: A family needs to build a structure that can sleep seven people. There are two adults who are each 170 cm tall, and five children: two are 120 cm tall, two are 100 cm tall, and one is 80
Rope Making
This activity is offered at the Elbow Lake Environmental Education Centre. Note that if harvesting materials from the land to make cordage an Indigenous community members should be invited into the learning environment to provide teachings related to the Honorable Harvest. Instructions: Extension: Western STEM Connection: Students review the following study by reading through handout
Haudenosaunee Basket Weaving
When doing Indigenous inspired basket weaving, invite an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper and/or community member into the learning space to deliver cultural teachings. Instructions: Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. Activity:
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Minds On: Seeing the World Through the Lens of Gratitude
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into your learning space to share the teachings of the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen. Instructions:
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Ohèn:ton Karihwatéhkwen (The Words That Come Before All Else)
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment when discussing creation stories with students. Instructions: Creation Stories
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Culminating Task: Town Hall Meeting
Instructions: Potential Topics for discussion:
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Building a Water Filter
Instructions: Students engage in a discussion regarding how Indigenous groups traditionally knew if water was clean to drink. For instance, community would look for sources of moving water. If possible, students can take a water sample from a still pond and from a running water source to examine the difference. Western STEM Connection: Teacher will
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Oil Spill Cleanup
Instructions: Following the Oil Spill Cleanup.pdf students use an egg carton to learn about how contaminants spread in a watershed and get into groundwater. Students question how the contaminants can be removed and talk about the implications of contaminants getting into groundwater. Activity adapted from: https://learning-center.homesciencetools.com/article/water-pollution-demonstration/ Optional Extension: Students learn the difference between crude oil
Biomagnification Tag Game
Instructions: This activity is a hands-on activity that visually demonstrates how microplastics, toxins, and mercury accumulate in fish and humans, and illustrates the interconnectedness of living things. The toxins in the lakes/oceans are consumed by small fish and stored in their flesh and fat. Bigger fish who rely on fish lower in the food chain
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Understanding the Impact of Road Salt on Local Lakes
Instructions: Dr. Shelley Arnott’s research Queen’s University shows the impact that salt can have on the health of local ecosystems. Teachers are encouraged to watch Dr. Arnott’s 32-minute video if they want more background information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zax8mJyuDI . Link to lab: https://rise.articulate.com/share/8_MISIMMwXXJT4_UCa2c4KOJkU-n-Lbh
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Testing for the Presence of Road Salt in Local Lakes
Instructions: Each year, 5-million tonnes of road salt is added to Canadian roads. This salt dissolves and makes its way into our lakes and rivers. Road salt is commonly made up of Sodium (Na) and Chloride (Cl). Since the chloride in road salt does not attach to soils, it can move down through the soil
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Broken Promises and Access to Clean Drinking Water in Indigenous Communities across Canada
Instructions: Ojibwe and Odawa Knowledge Keeper Liz Osawamick from Wiikwemkong Unceded First Nation on Manitoulin Island and Ojibwe and Odawa Elder Shirley Williams from Wiikwemkong Unceded First Nation on Manitoulin Island shared with QUILLS that there are many communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, from across Canada and the world that have threatened water sources. Indigenous communities
Watershed Activity
Instructions: To care for our water, we need to remember that water flows into and out of our area. Keeping water clean is a collective responsibility. Optional Extension: 7 Generations Teachings:
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Treating Oil Sands Wastewater
Instructions: Western STEM Connection Optional Extension: Students research the use of technology to mitigate environmental impacts and report back to the class
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Law of Water
Instructions: Teacher leads a discussion with students about what the Indigenous law of water is. Métis Knowledge Keeper Candace Lloyd from Cross Lake Island, Saskatchewan and Sault St. Marie, Ontario shared with QUILLS her understanding of the Law of Water. These understandings are expressed in Law of Water.pdf. Teachers should review this source prior to
Water in Song
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to share water songs with students. Community members may also feel comfortable discussing the holistic nature of water songs and their spiritual connection. Instructions: Optional Extension: Through independent research students learn about the history and impact of protest music. Students choose an issue they
Water in Ceremony
An Indigenous community member should be invited into the learning environment to help students learn about the role of water in ceremony. Instructions:
Trade and Travel
Instructions: Activity adapted from: “The Secret Life of Water” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_zS5O5ObIzlhufKmudx_kqMpQzkEx6vH/edit
Where is Water?
Instructions: This activity demonstrates that the water cycle is more complex than the 2-dimensional cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation that students should be familiar with. By understanding that water is in the ground, the air, bodies of water, animals, etc., students will build an understanding of the importance of protecting our water. 4. Discussion.
Medicine Wheel Teachings
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to deliver medicine wheel teachings. Instructions: Anishinaabe community member Nicole Bowron shared with QUILLS that the medicine wheel is a teaching tool used by many Indigenous people. It represents how all things in the natural world come in fours, and how all four things
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Ohèn:ton Karihwatéhkwen (The Words That Come Before All Else)
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment when discussing creation stories with students. Instructions: Creation Stories
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Drawing on Two-Eyed Seeing to Seek Solutions to Real World Issues
Instructions: Indigenous: Forests unify life; forests have a spirit; forests are ceremonial grounds; forests can provide spiritual and healing power. Western: Forests are comprised of biotic and abiotic elements; forests are made up of physical material that assists living things in an ecosystem; forests are full of resources that can be bought and sold. Point
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Two-Eyed Seeing
Instructions: Spotlight on Language: Words for Science Anishinaabemowin– Aki gikendaasowi Kanyen’kéha– Sha’oyé:ra Definition: Two-Eyed Seeing: “To see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous people’s ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing and to use both of these eyes together.”
Minds On: What Do We Know About Water?
Instructions: Students are each given a card with a phrase on it (Found in Minds On Statements.pdf). Students circulate and share phrases with one another. While circulating students try to figure out what the unit is about. KWL Brainstorm KWL Chart: Teacher records all the class knows about water- students can copy chart into their Outdoor
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Giving Thanks to the Water
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to help facilitate this holistic closing activity. Instructions: Learning Bundle closed through a holistic relationship building activity. Optional Extension: Students find a quiet spot near water and reflect on the experience of releasing water in their Outdoor Learning Journals (introduced in the Teacher’s Guide).
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Water Walkers
If possible, we recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning environment to help teach about the important role of Water Walkers. Instructions: Ojibwe and Odawa Knowledge Keepers Liz Osawamick and Shirley Williams originally from Wiikwemkong Unceded First Nation on Manitoulin Island shared with QUILLS the important role Indigenous women play protecting water for future
Water as Relative
Instructions: This activity shows the interconnectedness of water to everything else. This belief is held in common with a Western scientific perspective. This activity, therefore, point to the similarities that exist between the two ways of knowing.
Relationships to Water
Instructions: 2. Teachers display images and passages around the classroom or outside that depict both the Indigenous and Western scientific understanding of and relationship to water (Gallery Walk.pdf). Have students circulate and categorize the images and comments as belonging either to the Indigenous or Western scientific worldview. 3. Teachers debrief activity by revealing how the passages and
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Two-Row Wampum
An Indigenous community member must be invited into the learning space to deliver beadwork teachings. Instructions:
The Honorable Harvest
An Indigenous community member should be invited into the learning environment to help facilitate this Learning Activity. Non-Indigenous teachers should not encourage their students to gift asemaa (tobacco) or engage in the Honorable Harvest without support from the Indigenous community. Instructions:
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Indigenous Resurgence
An Indigenous community member should be invited into your classroom to help provide the cultural teachings surrounding beadwork. Instructions: Extension:
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A Spirited Epistemology
We recommend inviting a Knowledge Keeper or community member into the learning environment to help students understand the spirited epistemology of local Indigenous groups. Instructions: Image taken from commoxvalleyschools.ca Abiotic Elements: Water: Spotlight on Language: Note that students can go onto the online QUILLS dictionary to hear these word. The way the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe
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Food Production – The Grinding Stone
Instructions: Students reflect on the following questions in an exit ticket or other reflective writing piece. In Western culture things are made to be broken ie: to fuel capitalism.
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What is Seed Saving and Why is it Important?
Instructions: Seed Saving:
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Indigenous Land-Based Knowledge
We recommend inviting an Indigenous Knowledge Keeper or community member in to help communicate holistically what Indigenous Knowledge is to your students. Instructions: Teacher discusses with students how, like Western Scientists, Indigenous peoples also often examine bodies of water to understand the impacts of climate change on their communities. Indigenous ways of knowing are often
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Taking Responsibility to Reduce the Effects of Climate Change
Instructions: Activity: Optional Extension Activity:
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Land Acknowledgement Workshop
Instructions: PPT content: Importance of Land Acknowledgements Chances are, you’ve seen or heard a land acknowledgement at some point in the past few years. But maybe you don’t totally understand why land acknowledgements are so important. They are not about placing blame. Land acknowledgments are about our collective connection to and relationship with the land.
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Creation Stories and Language
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the classroom to tell the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Creation stories and talk about the significance of Indigenous languages. Instructions: Storytelling: Language and Language Revitalization Grammar: Indigenous languages are polysynthetic. Polysynthetic Indigenous languages, by being comprised of longer more complex words with each word containing many morphemes, reflect
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Culminating Activity: Living in Reciprocity: Contributing to a Pollinator Garden
Instructions: Students support a local pollinator garden. Follow link below for a pollinator garden document developed by Kanyen’kehá:ka community member Kelly Maracle. Resource is also available in the Pollinator Garden pdf. Class One: Class Two:
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Culminating Activity: Snapshot of Resistance: Showcasing Indigenous Leadership
Instructions: 3. Students choose an Indigenous leader to learn more about. A preliminary list of names students can choose from includes: 4. Students are asked to pick one of these leaders and write a “snapshot of resistance”. 5. Students can choose the way they want to share their snapshot with the class. As an example, snapshots
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Culminating Activity: Entering into Relationship with our Plant Relatives
A Knowledge Keeper or community member should be invited in to consult with students as they create their videos. Instructions: 1. Students review video series depicting Ra’nikonhrí:io Lazare and Katsenhaién:ton Lazare from Kahnawake Quebec providing teachings about Mullein, Staghorn Sumac, Plantain, and Milkweed. Videos were developed in partnership with the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawénna Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural
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Plants as Good Relatives
A Knowledge Keeper or community member should be present. Instructions: Western Science Connection 5. Students familiarize themselves with the study: What are the benefits of plants indoors and why do we respond positively to them? by Virginia Lohr (2010). Summary found on this interactive online tool. If computer access isn’t available, content can be found in the Plants as Good Relatives.pdf.
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Looking Inward: How Do We Impact the World Around Us?
A Knowledge Keeper or community member could be present. Instructions: Students take part in an activity that demonstrates the concepts of the Honorable Harvest. The Honorable Harvest is a mindful way of harvesting and using gifts from the land. The actions of the Honorable Harvest stem from a collection of Indigenous principles and practices of living
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Living in Reciprocity with All Our Relations
Instructions: Part 1: Understanding “All Our Relations” Key Message: Story talks about how the Anishinaabe came to learn that all things are related and the importance of living in reciprocity with the land to ensure that all living things (including animal and plant species) thrive. Part 2: Reciprocal Relationships 3. The class then comes up
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Biodiversity and Climate Change: What do Frogs Have to Say About It?
Instructions: Climate Change as a Threat to Biodiversity Klaus, S. P., &Lougheed, S. C. (2013). Changes in breeding phenology of eastern Ontario frogs over four decades. Ecology and Evolution, 3(4), 835-845. Research shows a dramatic shift in spring emergence using song meter data. 2. Students listen to audio samples on the QUILLS website. Students can
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Biodiversity and Invasive Species: A Garlic Mustard Case Study
Instructions: Invasive Species as a Threat to Biodiversity Participating in Citizen Science: 7. Students use the same methods as Colautti et al. to determine the presence/characteristics of garlic mustard on their school or on their property/neighborhood and write down observations. Instructions regarding how to track and input observations is included on the website compiled by Dr. Rob Colautti: garlicmustard.org. Instructions on how to run activity
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Colonization and Our Changing Landscape
Instructions: Students should be able to: Western Science Connection Bird diversity can change based on the size of fragments of forests. For example, wood thrushes disappear quickly from small forest fragments while other species do well. 1. Teacher reviews the impact of forest fragmentation on wood thrush species using the PowerPoint titled Impact of Forest Fragmentation
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Weaving – The Gifts of Cattails
An Indigenous community member should be invited into the learning space to help students harvest cattails and weave cattail mats. Instructions: A gift of the earth that provides for the spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing of both the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe locally is cattails. Spotlight on Language: Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous
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Minds On: Smudging
We recommend inviting an Indigenous community member into the learning space to help facilitate this learning activity. Instructions: Teachers explain that throughout the learning in the Bundle, the class should all try to see the best in one another, hear the best in the words of others, say kind things, and have an open heart.
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Gifts of the Forest
Please note that without the presence of a Knowledge Keeper or community member plants should not be picked or harvested. Instructions: Maple trees contribute to biodiversity by housing different mosses and providing shelter for insects, birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Photo: Different maple leaves Credit: natureupnorth.org The indentations of the Sugar Maple leaf are U-shaped,
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Can you Recognize your Relatives? Why Does it Matter?
Instructions: Worksheet will be made available in the Logo/Plant/Animal Flashcards that lists 16 corporate logos, 16 local plant species, and 16 local animal species.
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The Importance of Biodiversity
Instructions: Optional Extension: Habitat Lap Sit
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Getting to Know Our Plant Relatives
Instructions: Students will focus on learning about the plant they chose to develop a relationship with, in Activity One: Language Scavenger Hunt. Teachers can choose to do one or more of the following activities with their students: a. Students think creatively to record Western scientific knowledge of the plant (name, habitat, description; etc.), the history of the
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Language Scavenger Hunt
Instructions: 1. Students are to access the Language Scavenger Hunt worksheet on a device or given a printed version. This worksheet has images and names of the following plant species in English, Anishinaabemowin, and Kanyen’keha. The digital version also has audio clips on how to pronounce each word. For an extra challenge students can also try
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