Friday, April 16, 2010

4th Grade - Totem Poles












5 comments:

  1. Hi - Can you tell me more about how you are creating these? I have been doing a similar project for 2 years with 3rd graders and I am never that impressed with the results. Do you have any tips? I will bring more materials in...I think that will help, but I am finding wrapping paper around a TP roll more work for me than them and I don't want to give it up (they like it), but the quality is not good when I don't help some immensely. Thoughts?

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  2. I had various colors of contruction paper cut into strips. They had to choose four colors for their four animals trying to relate the color to their animal. They did all the drawing when the paper was flat and then glued the strips on once their drawing/coloring was done. They then added the 3-D details. They had to add some sort of 3-D detail to each animal. I then had strips of silver sticky tape they added in between the animals. Finally they could add feathers sequins, etc to complete.

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  3. Thanks for the great idea. We are studying Native Americans in the third grade, and this goes perfectly with out unit.

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  4. As an educator and Indigenous person, I do hope that all teachers who are making these totem poles are bringing in an Elder or knowledge keeper to speak to them. They also are not made by all Indigenous peoples of North America and should not be a craft because they seem fun or neat to look at. The peoples of the West coast who do make these, should also be studied if one wants to make totem poles. Tokenism is not cool.

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