Education: A Dene Perspective

Teacher Resource Manual

Part 1: Orientation to Dene Kede

E. Planning

1. Yearly Planning

How much am I expected to teach in a year? What do I choose for cultural content?

Each community will differ in the themes it chooses to emphasize and the times of year that it chooses to undertake the various themes.

Example: The emphasis given to the topic of fishing as it applies to the Dehcho Region will vary between the communities of Fort Simpson and Trout Lake. In Trout Lake it is an important year-round activity, whereas in Fort Simpson, it seems to be a spring and summer event.

These differences make it difficult to design a program for the whole region from a central location. Each community must design a program that best suits its needs based on its cultural practices, student interest and school year. This will also allow the communities to decide the depth and the amount of time spent on each topic.

In the smaller communities with one-room schools, the native language teachers can get together with interested parent groups, elders or the Community Education Council to discuss which themes to cover and when. In the larger schools, where there is more than one native teacher, the teachers could get together to plan the yearly program as a team.

One of the ways that planning can be done is by making a large chart of the school year, as shown in Diagram I. The chart could be arranged on a table top using 5" x 8" file cards and masking tape, or drawn on a chalkboard. It should be drawn so that there are ten columns representing each month of the school year, with space under each column representing the weeks of the school year.

The themes chosen from the curriculum are written on the file cards as shown in Diagram II. For each card, the group decides what key experiences and skills knowledge-attitudes should be taught for each grade level.

In doing yearly planning in Rae-Edzo, the teachers take into account the following kinds of activities when making up their cards:

• seasonal events such as berry picking, gathering wood, and muskrat hunting.
• community events such as the Dogrib Assembly and Christmas celebrations.
• year round activities such as hand games and drum dances
• non-Dene events such as Halloween and Valentines Day.

The thematic topics outlined in Dene Kede can fit into at least the first four kinds of activities.

The cards are then placed in the spaces representing the weeks, keeping in mind when these topics may best be taught during the school year (see figures 9, 10 and 11). The cards can be moved around until every card has found a place.

The resulting large chart can be copied onto paper and filed for teacher reference. This information can be used not simply to plan but as a record of what is taught to the students.

For the sake of school-wide planning, especially if more than one grade will be taking advantage of the key experiences, teachers from all concerned grades should plan together. The record of this planning should be used to plan from year to year to enable appropriate repetition of experiences as well as introduction of new ones.

2. Thematic Planning

What are the components of a Thematic Plan?

Key Cultural Experience(s)

The key cultural experience(s) are activities that reflect or are a real part of the Dene culture of today. The experiences are holistic, activity oriented, and ideal in the sense that they reflect, as much as possible, the ideal relationship that the Dene can have with the land, other people, the spiritual world and themselves. The key experiences bring all the concepts, skills and attitudes, that are being learned in a classroom setting, together into an activity which is real and important to the Dene.

Learning Expectations

What is it that the students should know (skills, concepts) or what attitudes should the students have, as a result of the thematic unit as a whole? The students work toward the expectations both in classroom work as well as during key experiences. The expectations should reflect a balance of the four components of the curriculum: the relationships with the spiritual world, the land, other people, and the self. The expectations should outline the language development expectations as well, in either Dene as a first language or as a second language.

Cultural Concept and Skill Development

This part of the the Dene Kede program consists of learning activities, usually classroom based, which isolate cultural skills or concepts for development and reinforcement. The skills and concepts relate to the key experience(s) at the core of the thematic unit. Language learning activities are also a part of these activities. Language skills (either first or second language) are developed as a part of, or related to, cultural concept and skill development.

Reflection

Throughout the course of a thematic unit, the teacher encourages the students to personally reflect on what they are learning. Reflection activities are similar to counselling in that student attitudes and feelings are given attention. Through reflection, the student's and community's interests are negotiated. Effective reflection will enable the student to develop a relationship with himself or herself that is true and comfortable. Reflection activities can be in the form of sharing circles, journal keeping or conferencing with the teacher.

Subject Integration

The core subjects, math, science, social studies, health and language arts are related to the key experience in some meaningful or practical way.

Sharing Experience

After a round of key experiences and lessons which explain, reinforce and review aspects of the key experience, students should be given an opportunity to engage in some kind of activity which communicates to people in the community what they have learned. This can be in the form of a display, report or entertainment, or it can be something that is shared with members of the community, such as food that has been prepared.

Slavey as a First Language - Grade 3

"Rabbit"