Introduction to Indigenized Inquiry Tasks

These Indigenized Inquiry tasks demonstrate how you can design inquiry units, starting with place first and meet curriculum outcomes through authentic, meaningful and natural learning opportunities. Starting with place first means facilitating and guiding student learning through culturally relevant themes that align with your community's cultural calendar, monthly customs and values, and the NWT Indigenous curriculums. 

The place-based provocations provided are intended to ignite students' curiosities and prior knowledge, and engage them in critical-thinking and questioning that is related to and inspired by their local community. These provocations are suggestions and it would be best practice to have these elders and community members invited into your classroom, or to bring your students to the place of provocation. The tasks are rated using a 1-5 anchor scale and are based on the mathematical complexities involved. Each task provides multiple entry points across all of the core subject areas, along with scaffolds and extensions to support various grade levels. 

The provocations are followed by a suggested possible approach, identifying the thinking routines and inquiry moves to best support your students. Key questions are also provided to prompt and deepen student learning. At the moment, assessment rubrics are only provided for the Grade 4 BC math big ideas, math content and math curricular competencies. Additional grade level resources and more evidence of student solutions will be added as the 2023-2024 school year begins. 

These tasks serve as a menu of offerings and suggested activities to support your students' learning journey. Lesson plans are not provided, as these tasks are very open-ended and the learning journey taken will rely heavily on your students' curiosities and interests. As we know, each class and each community are unique! These tasks provide ample opportunities for teachers to create lesson plans and units that are relevant to their class of learners and their community. There are also rich opportunities for co-creating and co-designing with your learners. 

Tasks

The tasks below are still under construction and should be ready for publishing soon:

“Families, communities, places, and ceremonies nurture the spirit in informal learning environments [. . .] it is expected that schools will validate the existing knowledge base of the students and provide an environment, experiences, and knowledge, where students may work toward fulfillment of their gifts and purposes in accordance with the laws of Creator, passed down through the collective stories, traditions, customs, and identities of Aboriginal peoples”

-Marie Batiste (2013, p.14)

These tasks contain images, videos, lessons, resources, embedded links, activities and worksheets from multiple sources. A comprehensive list of references can be found at the bottom of each task page. A list of research references can be found under the Acknowledgments tab.