Gone are the days of treating curriculum like a to-do checklist. What has never changed is the ever-evolving challenge to meaningfully engage students in curriculum and allowing them to explore while learning, strengthen metacognitive skills, and allow them to connect curriculum with their real worlds.

Below is a list of just some of the mandated Ontario provincial NBE 3U curriculum expectations (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/nativestudies1112curr.pdf) that are covered via this resource package.

By the end of this package, students will:

– demonstrate an understanding of the positive nature of media works (e.g., by assessing how form, style, and language are used in newspapers, magazine articles, and video productions) in depicting challenges faced by Aboriginal communities. (p.14)

– identify ways in which Aboriginal elders, healers, leaders, artists, and writers promote cultural perspectives and identities. (p. 20)

– explain ways in which artists, healers, elders, women, and politicians define and promote Aboriginal peoples’ aspirations (e.g., in the briefs and submissions as recorded in the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 1996). (p. 30)

– identify examples of art, architecture, and artifacts that depict a spiritual and emotional link between Aboriginal peoples and their traditional lands (e.g., totem pole carvings; masks; designs of cultural centres; artwork of Daphne Odjig, Maxine Noel, and Joane Cardinal Schubert); (p. 31)

– identify the responses, found in print and media sources, of artists, athletes, writers, healers, and elders from various Aboriginal groups to challenges to their distinct cultures; (p.36)

– identify characteristics of language, artistic symbols, and the spiritual beliefs of Aboriginal nations that relate to the natural environment (e.g., the language of the Iroquoian thanksgiving address, West Coast totem poles, Inuit stone carvings); (p.49)

– identify cultural achievements (e.g., in art, architecture, music) of Aboriginal peoples that could be used to correct stereotypical images of them held by Canadian society; and identify how challenges to traditional values (e.g., kinship relations expressed through the use of terms such as “brothers” and “sisters”, spiritual aspects of Aboriginal world views) are addressed by Aboriginal artists, athletes, writers, healers, and elders in print and other media; (p. 55)

Considerations: The courses in Native studies provide teachers with the latitude to make modifications to meet the needs of exceptional students as set out in their Individual Education Plans. Although each course stresses the acquisition of information and skills and the communication of ideas, the means for accomplishing these aims are varied, ranging from written stories to oral presentations to various art forms. Please consider using the Achievement Charts on page 84 and 85.