Schools for a Living Planet comes North
Program provides Northern lessons for Northern students
Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Published Monday, October 20, 2014
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Teachers in the Northwest Territories now have access to northern-specific lesson plans and activities through an education program from the World Wildlife Fund.
The CIBC donated $150,000 to the wildlife fund's Schools for a Living Planet program last week.
The program is an online resource aimed at grades 3 to 8 educators. Teachers can log on to the website and access a variety of environmental activities and lesson plans to help supplement science, English and social studies curriculums, according to the website.
But Rose-Marie Jackson, education program manager for Ecology North, said the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had recently discovered teachers in the territory weren't using Schools for a Living Planet resources.
"They can track where teachers are logging in from and they found that teachers in the North weren't using their program," Jackson said. "They had a lot of support from teachers in the provinces, but the teachers in the territories were not accessing Schools for a Living Planet because they weren't finding that the materials were relevant to their northern students' needs."
WWF and Ecology North then partnered to consult with teachers to develop information specific to the environment and lifestyles of northern students, Jackson said.
"We developed it with Northwest Territories teachers in mind," she said.
Jackson said now, teachers logging onto the program can find lesson plans on everything from permafrost to the territory's ice road systems.
Each lesson can tie in to existing subjects, such as science, Jackson said.
"The Grade 5 science curriculum has a focus on weather, so we took it one step further and made it focus on snow," she said.
"We talked about in the North, the traditional modes of travel on snow, first with dogsleds and now people go out on snowmobiles. Now with ice roads, we can transport lots of materials on ice roads."
Lesson plans include activities to help students understand subject matter, such as learning to build snow shelters like a quinzee or an igloo.
The lessons link to the Inuuqatigiit andDene Kede cultural curriculums already in place in schools, as well as about 120 words that have been translated into aboriginal languages, Jackson said.
"We saw that as something that perhaps language specialty teachers could use to supplement their teaching or something the classroom teacher could use to enhance the curriculum," she said.
Holly Norris-Jezovit, a Grade 6/7 teacher at Deninu School in Fort Resolution, said she believes the program will help her students better understand subject matter.
"It helps them put it in a context within their own backyards," she said.
Learning about waste management, for example, is much more relevant when students are given information geared to the North, she said.
"We can look at how we deal with waste here in Fort Resolution, how it's affecting our land, animals and way of life instead of looking at things that are happening in the south," she said.
Being able to relate to subject matter is vital to learning.
"When you're talking about city streets and high rises and infrastructure that's not a part of where they live and where they've grown up, there is a disconnect," she said.
Now, students can learn about subjects that apply to their own communities. "They're talking about local things that matter to them," Norris-Jezovit added.
In addition to supplementing lesson plans, Jackson said the program is a great resource for teachers new to the territory. Each subject includes links to other websites to help teachers find more information.
"Let's say it's energy conservation or the cost of electricity in the Northwest Territories and you're new to the North, you're not quite sure where to find this information," she said.
"We have pulled together information from Arctic Energy Alliance and other related websites with regard to that topic."
Jackson said while the project just launched last week, she hopes it will one day expand beyond grades 3 to 8.
