Unit Plan: First Nations Paddles

Math, Visual Arts, Language Arts / Grade 4-7

Big Ideas

Art, mathematics, and story-telling are vehicles to explore cultures and deepen our understanding of the world, bringing us closer together.

Concepts:

  • Geometry
  • Elements and principles of design
  • Form
  • The Writing Process
  • Oral Storytelling
Essential Questions

Students will keep considering…

VISUAL ARTS

  • How does art connect us, our communities, and our cultures?

MATH

  • How does geometry help us make sense of the world?

LANGUAGE ARTS

 

  • How does oral storytelling connect us to places and people?
  • How can an open mind lead us to deeper understandings about ourselves and other cultures?
  • Why does writing have a purpose?
Evaluative Criteria

Teacher Evaluative Criteria:

Teachers will be assessing students’ ability to:

  • Create design that incorporates traditional Aboriginal design elements
  • Make connections between the Aboriginal shapes and 2D shapes and 3D solids
  • Work through the writing process
  • Share their story orally
Monitoring Progress

Teacher will monitor progress:

Formative Assessment throughout: During class discussions, small group discussions and one on one conversations

Potential Student Misunderstandings:

N/A

Resources
  • Examples of Coast Salish shapes and art
  • Colouring Sheets that show a variety of First Nations shapes
  • First Nations Support Workers/Aboriginal Success Teacher
  • BLM of paddle shape
  • Literacy 44 Graphic Organizers for How To Writing, Pourquoi Tales, and Story Writing Frames
Reflection

How will teachers and their students reflect on and evaluate the completed project?

Teacher:
Next time I teach this unit I would…

Student:
My students needed:

Process:
Product:
Content:

Potential Student Misunderstanding:

Stage 1 – Desired Results

Big Ideas

Art, mathematics, and story-telling are vehicles to explore cultures and deepen our understanding of the world, bringing us closer together.

Concepts:

  • Geometry
  • Elements and principles of design
  • Form
  • The writing process
  • Oral storytelling
Transfer Goals

Students will be able to independently use their learning to…

  • See how art often helps to define cultural beliefs and is often place based.  
  • Understand that art tells a story.
  • See how shapes are important to and represented in art.
  • See how stories help us understand different cultures and ourselves.
Meaning

UNIT UNDERSTANDINGS:

Students will understand that…

VISUAL ARTS

  • Personal identity and a sense of belonging within a community are often demonstrated through visual art and design that is specific to that person or community.
  • Time in history, as well as where art was created has in influence on the art itself.
  • Visual art is a language and a way to communicate many things.
  • Experiencing visual art is a way for people to connect with each other.

 

MATH

  • Geometry is universal across all cultures and helps us make sense of the world around us.

 

LANGUAGE ARTS

  • Writing has a purpose.
  • Making connections between the things we know and the things we learn help us to understand.
  • Having an open mind helps us learn new things.
  • Language and stories (both written and oral) can entertain us and make us happy.
  • Having an open mind and exploring new texts and stories helps us make connections and learn more about ourselves and other cultures.
  • Understanding the different ways language works will help us use it appropriately and purposefully.

 

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:

Students will keep considering…

VISUAL ARTS

  • How does art connect us, our communities, and our cultures?

MATH

  • How does geometry help us make sense of the world?

LANGUAGE ARTS

  • How does oral story telling connect us to places and people?
  • How can an open mind lead us to deeper understandings about ourselves and other cultures?
  • Why does writing have a purpose? 

> Click here to learn more about Essential Questions

Acquisition

CURRICULAR COMPETENCIES

Students will be skilled at…

VISUAL ART

Exploring and Creating

  • Intentionally select, apply, combine, and arrange artistic elements, processes, materials, and technique in art making.
  • Create artistic works as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play.
  • Explore relationships between identity, place, culture, society, and belonging through the arts.
  • Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of personal, social, cultural, historical, and environmental contexts in relation to the arts.

Reasoning and Reflecting

  • Research, describe, interpret and evaluate how visual artists use processes, materials, technologies, tools, techniques, and environments in the arts.
  • Examine relationships between the arts and the wider world.

Communicating and Documenting

  • Take creative risks to express feelings, ideas, and experiences
  • Experience, document, perform, and share creative works in a variety of ways
  • Interpret and communicate ideas using symbols and elements to express meaning through the arts

MATH

Understanding and Solving 

  • Engage in problem-solving experiences that are connected to place, story, and cultural practices relevant to the local community

Communicating and Representing

  • Engage in problem-solving experiences that are connected to place, story, and cultural practices relevant to the local community
  • Communicate in a variety of ways to explain, clarify, and justify mathematical ideas
  • Develop mathematical understanding through concrete, pictorial, and symbolic representations

Connecting and Reflecting

  • Visualize and describe the mathematical concepts.
  • Explore, apply, and connect concepts to each other, to other disciplines, and to the real world.
  • Apply cultural perspectives of First Peoples to the concepts of locating, measuring, and numbering.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Comprehend and Connect 

  • Recognize and appreciate how different forms, structures, and features of texts reflect different purposes, audiences, and messages.
  • Recognize how language constructs personal, social, and cultural identity.
  • Construct meaningful personal connections between self, text, and world.
  • Recognize and appreciate the role of story, narrative, and oral tradition in expressing First Peoples’ perspectives, values, beliefs, and points of view

Create and Communicate 

  • Use writing and design processes to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences.
  • Assess and refine texts to improve their clarity, effectiveness, and impact according to purpose, audience, and message.
  • Use an increasing repertoire of conventions of English spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

 

CONTENT

Students will know that…


VISUAL ART

  • Purposeful application of elements and principles to create meaning in visual art, including but not limited to:

1. Elements of design: line, shape, space, texture, colour, form, tone; principles of design: pattern, repetition, balance, contrast, emphasis, 

2. Image development strategies

3. Traditional and contemporary Aboriginal arts and arts-making processes


MATH

  • Triangles and pyramids (Grade 6)
  • Regular and irregular polygons (Grade 4)
  • Line symmetry (Grade 4)

LANGUAGE ARTS

 

Story/Text 

  • Form, function, and genre of texts
  • Features of written text

Strategies and Processes 

  • Oral language strategies
  • Metacognitive strategies
  • Writing processes

Language Features, Structures, and Conventions

  • Features of oral language
  • Effective paragraphing
  • Language varieties
  • Sentence structure and grammar
  • Conventions

CORE COMPETENCIES

Which Core Competencies will be integrated into the unit?

Communication: connect and engage with others; acquire, present and interpret information; explain/recount and reflect on experiences and accomplishments
Critical and Creative Thinking: Novelty and value; generating ideas; developing ideas; analyze and critique; develop and design
Personal and Social: Relationships and cultural contexts; personal values and choices; personal strengths and abilities; self determination; self regulation; valuing diversity

 

The following resources are made available through the British Columbia Ministry of Education. For more information, please visit BC’s New Curriculum.

Big Ideas

The Big Ideas consist of generalizations and principles and the key concepts important in an area of learning. The Big Ideas represent what students will understand at the completion of the curriculum for their grade. They are intended to endure beyond a single grade and contribute to future understanding.


Visit the Ministry of Education for more information

Core Competencies

orangecommunicationCommunications Competency

The set of abilities that students use to impart and exchange information, experiences and ideas, to explore the world around them, and to understand and effectively engage in the use of digital media

bluethinkingThinking Competency

The knowledge, skills and processes we associate with intellectual development

greensocialSocial Competency

The set of abilities that relate to students’ identity in the world, both as individuals and as members of their community and society


Visit the Ministry of Education for more information

Curricular Competencies & Content

Curricular Competencies are the skills, strategies, and processes that students develop over time. They reflect the “Do” in the Know-Do-Understand model of curriculum. The Curricular Competencies are built on the thinking, communicating, and personal and social competencies relevant to disciplines that make up an area of learning.


Visit the Ministry of Education for more information

Additional Resources

 

First People's Principles of Learning

To read more about First People’s Principles of Learning, please click here.

For classroom resources, please visit the First Nations Education Steering Committee.