Ms. Dodier's Back to School unit

These activities engage many different content areas and competencies in the curriculum such as:

• Core competencies
• Social Studies (K-7)
• English Language Arts (K-7)
• Science (4-6)

Each activity includes suggestions for which skills and points of engagement to observe during the acitivties.

We hosted the List & Learn contest as our 2025 back-to-school event. In the contest, we asked teachers to use the Favourites List feature on our website and submit a screenshot of their list explaining the theme and curriculum connections. 

Stephanie Dodier was the winner, and her list fits nicely into the start of the school year with a bit of outdoor exploring, an Indigenous lens, and our Orange Shirt Day activity. We encourage you to incorporate this into your lesson planning if you're teaching Grades 4-6 this year. 

British Columbia and water

In B.C., we generate our electricity using water. We rely on water for drinking, showering, industry and agriculture. Wildlife also depends on this precious resource. Despite our province being rich in rivers and lakes, we experience summer droughts. So in order to have sufficient water to meet everyone’s needs, we need to use less water and use less electricity so we can all share this resource. 

B.C. has huge potential for generating hydroelectricity as we have heavy precipitation, mountains slopes and interior drainage basins. However, many of the large rivers in the interior have not been developed to generate hydroelectricity due to the impact it could have on the environment and salmon habitat. Subsequently, conservation is essential particularly since we have a growing population and increased demand for both potable water and electricity. 

A variety of resources can be used to engage students in exploring Indigenous perspectives on water. Some examples include: 

• The Water Walker by Joanne Robertson (can be found online on YouTube)
• Using proper protocols to invite an Elder to speak with students 
• Showing videos of Elders or First Nations community members speaking about water. Possible videos include:
  • Protecting Salmon. Building our Future.
  • Water - The Sacred Relationship

Additional Orange Shirt Day teaching resources: 

• University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Center: UBC’s teaching and learning resources have further materials to support learning about Residential Schools and their history in Canada. This link provides a search function to search for books and media for students in Kindergarten through Grade 12, including resources for adults. Visit irshdc.ubc.ca/learn/orange-shirt-day-resources.
• Assembly of First Nations Educational Toolkit: The resources from the Assembly of First Nations provides a toolkit to “bring together First Nations and non-First Nations people and foster a spirit of cooperation, understanding, and action” with learning modules for educators and the public. Topics include Residential Schools, Impacts of Contact, The Indian Act, Timelines and Maps, and a First Nations Performance Indicators checklist for assessing and developing programs to enhance learning from a First Nations perspective. Visit education.afn.ca/afntoolkit.
• Orange Shirt Day Society: A variety of teaching and learning resources and guides that are free to download for various grades. Including resources in French and English. Visit orangeshirtday.org/reconciliation-hub/for-teachers.

Field Journaling

Compared to other activities, the challenge with field journaling is not just guiding students to accomplish it correctly but to spark their imagination and give them the confidence to journal their own way. A key point to share with students is that writing and science are a process, and that it starts with simple things like taking notes and drawing things you see. They should feel empowered to journal instead of striving for perfection.

It can help to break the activity down into prompts and examples to get students started. Field journaling involves three key elements:

• Drawing: With field journaling, it’s usually a good idea to do some drawing. This helps you to record visual observations and think about what you see. You do not need to be a skilled artist, and you can use playful ideas to record something.
  • For example, you might have a hard time drawing an animal you see, but you can still record shapes, textures, and comparisons to other objects. If you compare the lizard to a five dollar bill, how big is it?
  • You don’t have to capture everything in your drawing—you might draw a simple tree but draw certain elements like the bark in more detail.
  • Drawings can help emphasize things you want to remember in a way that photos don’t. For example, you might draw sparkles on a river to emphasize how clean and clear the water was, or you might draw dark ripples on some bark to emphasize how rough the texture was.
    
    
• Writing: A field journal should use writing to help remember what your thoughts were when filling it out. That said, you should avoid the instinct to write in detail or to capture it perfectly like you would in an essay. Instead, use writing to record important observations. You can use a mix of long sentences and short words—in any way that makes sense to you.
  
  
• Thinking: Your field journal is all about using mediums and methods of your choice to think and engage with what you see. 
  • Observations—record what you observe with all your senses so that you can remember, research, and compare later.
  • Questions—don’t be shy about recording your thoughts and acknowledging what you don’t know. Questions like: what is this bug called? Why is the water in this creek orange like rust? How did moss get up so high?
  • Connections—connecting your observations with things that are familiar or you already know can be a great way to remember. Examples: I remember this flower from my mom’s garden; we talked about this place in class; that boulder is bigger than a car.
  • Theories—Use your observations, thinking, and connections to start finding ways to explain what you’re seeing. For example: You learned in class that the wind can carry seeds around, so you suspect that’s how the dandelions reached this field; there are lots of bees buzzing around, so there are probably lots of flowers nearby.
  • While you’re journaling, you don’t need to have all the answers and your theories can be as likely or as unlikely as you want. Just make sure you are mindful of where your theories come from—if you have a strong theory based on what you learned in class then it’s worth sharing with others; if you think a bug is so weird that it might have come from another planet then you can hold onto that theory until you find better evidence.

•  Consider what other activities might enhance your students learning in these areas