• This inquiry is largely guided by elders and local community members. You are strongly encouraged to invite an elder into your classroom to share some stories and traditional knowledge with your students about how the traditional lifestyle of the Inuvialuit. They can share stories about how their Inuvialuit ancestors predicted seasons and months, and how the seasons impacted culture, traditions and ways of life.  

• The Inuvialuit were nomadic people and even though that is not the case today, harvesting, hunting and fishing still relies on the seasonal calendar and the animal migration patterns.

• Before you invite the elder into your classroom, prompt your students to consider why Tuk has 24 daylight in the summer and why it has 24 hour darkness in the winter. You may show your students some photos and/or videos. 

• Prompt your learners to make some personal connections to their lives and families. You can prompt them to consider what activities they do and when they do them. 

• You can facilitate this discussion through a sharing circle, such as the inside out circle. Your learners can take turns sharing the activities they do during the 24 daylight summer, 24 darkness winter, Spring and Fall. They may share some of their family traditions and stories. 

• As you co-create your learning wall, your essential question may be: How did  Inuvialuit ancestors keep track of time before modern day calendars and clocks? How do you think they knew changes of seasons were approaching? Why was this important? How is the land our teacher? 

• Use a thinking routine such as 3-2-1 Ibyuk so that students can organize their prior knowledge, questions and wonders. 

• As students come up with questions, you can have them place them on your class learning wall. You may then do a question sort, working with your students to organize the questions and prepare them for your elder visit. 

• What do you know about the seasons here in Tuktoyaktuk? 

• How are they different to southern parts of Canada?

• What do you know about the 24 daylight in the summer time?

• What do you know about the 24 darkness in the winter time?

• How do we know what season it is? What tools do we use?

• What tools do you think your Inuvialuit ancestors used?

• What kind of science may help explain seasons? How? 

• How do you think people in the past knew what season it was? How did they know what time it was?

• How do the seasons affect the animals?

• Why is it important to understand animal migration patterns?

• In Agnes' story, what kind of data collection was her family using? How? 

• What kind of patterns did the identify? How do you know?

• How do you identify patterns on the land? 

• How do you collect data from the land? 

• How do traditional methods of data collection compare to nowadays?

• How does learning these skills make us more capable learners?

• Who else in our community can help us solve these questions? 

• What else are you curious about? 

• Provide your learners with some questions start sentence stems and/or use the Question Starts thinking routine. 

• As students will be working on their oral language skills, you may take this opportunity to assess them using the oral language developmental checklist. If required, you have access to all the grade level checklists. 

• A Google Slide Deck is provided for these lessons. The lesson sequence, instructions and materials required can all be found in the presentation.

• The data was retrieved from the James Gruben Airport in Tuktoyaktuk. 

• You are encouraged to cover only one lesson per session

• Lesson 1: Imagine measuring the length of time. Consider the hours of daylight here in Tuktoyaktuk. How could we measure and represent the length of daylight hours. I wonder, what would the graph look like?

• Lesson 2: Imagine you have a yellow dot on the outside of your skidoo track wheel. Imagine what path that dot would travel as the skidoo moved forward. I wonder, what would the graph look like? What pattern would it create?

• Lesson 3: Circles in other Indigenous cultures. How could you measure the perimeter of a circle? How can we relate the perimeter of the outer circle to the inner circle? Will they be the same? What are your predictions?

• As students consolidate their knowledge, they can work together to add the new information to your class learning wall. 

• How can we record data on daylight hours? What tools and resources to we need? 

• What predictions do you have about daylight hours? What patterns will arise? 

• What tools do we need to organize our data? Please explain your reasoning. 

• Has any of this data surprised you? How?

• Now that we have our data, how can we represent this data on a graph?

• What tools and/or resources do we need? 

• Look at the 6 year data collection, what patterns do you notice?

• What could explain these patterns?

• What does our graph look like? 

• What happens if we compare our graph to a graph in Vancouver? What explains the differences? How? 

• How does our location on Earth affect our daylight hours? 

• Why was it important for our ancestors to know about the amount of daylight hours? Is this still important today?

• How do seasonal calendars work?

• How are daylight hours linked to survival? 

• What patterns can we learn from the land? The sun? 

• How have our ancestors adapted to the varying levels of daylight?

• How do you think the hours of daylight are connected to Earth’s tilt? 

• What happens when you measure time?

• Do you prefer traditional methods or modern day methods of data collection, why? 

• What does the path of your skidoo track remind you of?

• How does the ski doo activity relate to measuring the height of time?

• What happens when you roll circles?

• Can you identify and cycloid patterns anywhere else in the world?

• What do circles represent in Indigenous cultures? Can you provide some examples? 

• What do circles represent?

• How can we use circles in Math?

• What do you know about infinity? 

• You may modify these lessons as required. If students need more support, you can begin the lessons as a whole group and then have students work in pairs. 

• You may provide students with various options and manipulatives such as grid paper and unit cubes. You may also allow them to use some technology such as Google Sheets. 

• Much of the Literacy over this unit is covered through storytelling, oral language and listening skills. 

• You may want to explore the local stories from the elder(s) who worked with your students.

• You may also want to explore some of the above books and incorporate these into your Guided Reading lessons.

• Additionally, your students can spend some time researching stories about the moon and the sun from various different cultures.

• There are some school copies of "How Tulugak stole the Sun” by Ishmael Alunik (1988). 

• There are various entry points depending on your students' interests. Some may want to explore more into: local stories, history and traditions, the science behind earth's seasons, modern vs. traditional data collection and stories and knowledge about circles, the moon and sun from other cultures. 

• If you are covering this unit over December/January, you can work with your students to incorporate "Welcome Back the Sun" activities. In reflecting on your students' learning, you can work with them to plan how they will share their learning and work with the community. They will have multiple pieces of work and projects that they could celebrate and share. 

• The create/communicate aspect of this inquiry is very open-ended and dependent on your students' interests and curiosities. 

Here are some examples of activities they could do: 

• Elder stories: Students can find creative ways to share the stories and knowledge they have heard from the elders. They can turn these into a class book and include a biography for the elder as well. 

• Expository: Students can create infographics, presentations and/or demonstrations of Earth's rotation, revolution and seasons. 

• Journal/Retell: Students can keep sun logs and/or write journal entries about their seasonal activities. 

• Poetry: Students can write poetry about the seasons, culture and traditions. 

• Narratives: Students can write their own stories about the sun and the moon. They can create their own version of "How Tulugak stole the Sun” 

• Students are given the choice to select any creative/communication activity they like. 

• Allow your students the option to use Google's Text-Speech features. 

• Students are presented with the opportunity to share their work using multi-modal formats. 

• Multi- modal written expression: demonstration, play, podcast, puppet show, clay animation, stop motion, comic book, song, dance or any other ideas your students may have. 

Alunik, I. (1998). How Tulugak Stole the Sun. 

BBC Micro:bit. (n.d.). Shining sunbeams. https://microbit.org/projects/make-it-code-it/shining-sunbeams/

BDDEC. (2022). Inside Out Circle. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eBoAkMNrProb6xPMi4UsyJDa2A8xxTCz/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113693328431742876623&rtpof=true&sd=true

Brereton, L. (2016). A Visit with Moon and the Sun. 

Crash Course Kids. (2015, Apr 29). Earth's Rotation & Revolution: Crash Course Kids 8.1 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l64YwNl1wr0

DARTHVEGAN (2013). Seasons Poster. CC's Crafts. https://ccscrafts.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/seasons-poster-winter/

Eleftheria Karagiorgou (2017, Nov 5). Sun, Earth and Moon: a journey through the Solar system with Scratch and Makey Makey [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq7GPsMvwJo

Gadanidis, G. (2013, Aug 21). Trigonometry in Grade 3 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDExl9uo0c

Gadanidis, G. (2019, May 25). Math Waves [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtiFqo9MtXc 

Gemini, J (n.d) Midnight sun. Tuktoyaktuk. Northeastern Territories. Canada [Online image]. Retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/395824254720762986/

Kenojuak, A (1992). Nunavut Qajanartuk [Online image]. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_2021-2002-1 

MacDonald, C. (2020). Remembering the Sun’s Return.

McClelland, S. (2023). How to Make a Sun Dial. Little Bins Little Hands. https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/how-to-make-a-sundial/

Microsoft Makecode. (2022). Building a Two Liter Soda Bottle Rocket. https://makecode.microbit.org/courses/ucp-science/rocket-acceleration/build

Mierzwa, S. (2021). Models of the sun-earth-moon [Online image]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/MierzwaSandra/status/1387386130442727430/photo/4 

Mike, N. (2016). Seasonal Cycles. Nunavummi Reading Series. https://www.strongnations.com/store/item_display.php?i=6154&f=3111,1262,737

Pokiak, J. (2022, July 11). Personal Interview.

Resilience Project (n.d). Teaching Guide. https://resilienceproject.ca/

Science North. (n.d.). Ozobots and the Four Seasons. https://schools.sciencenorth.ca/sites/default/files/inline-files/Ozobots-Coding-Lesson-Plan-Template.pdf

Shuman, J. (n.d). My Beadwork Creations. Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/514536326149723964/

Thinking Pathways. (n.d). Question Starts. https://thinkingpathwayz.weebly.com/questionstarts.html

Thomson, S (2014). The darkness and light of the arctic polar night [Online image]. Retrieved from: https://mare-incognitum.no/marinenight2014/?p=107

Thunder Son (2021, Nov 2). The Dreamcatcher Legends: Ojibwe Stories [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48LsaiMRrro 

White, A. (2022, July 15). Personal Interview. 

World Wildlife Fund. (2007). Arctic Science 3a and 3b. https://wwf.panda.org/discover/knowledge_hub/teacher_resources/arctic_science_3/

All Google Slide Decks created by Driscoll, P (2022) as part of a masters' course project. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-gKus-9S1p4CGNTN4rMJ0hYZxsjHfUCoqoMTW2h2G_g/edit?usp=sharing