Kenora Catholic District School Board

This past school year the students in Grade 1 and Grade 3/4 from St. John School were involved in a Ways of Knowing Project that focused on exploring traditional math concepts. Aboriginal Elders and community members were invited into the school to partner on the project and share traditional knowledge and teachings. The project provided students with a unique learning opportunity.

Mary Cunningham, Superintendent of Instructional Services, Shelly Tom, Aboriginal Resource Teacher and Jordan Temple, Math Lead for the Board teamed up to work with St. John School and the local Aboriginal partners to offer the program.

Mary Cunningham, Superintendent of Instructional Services talks about the project. "The project is a First Nation, Metis and Inuit Collaborative Inquiry project that involves Elders and local Aboriginal people. The project and the research allows us to explore the Aboriginal ways of knowing math. What we've learned through the Ways of Knowing project is that our traditional education system uses Eurocentric mathematical concepts and our Aboriginal people have a totally different way of describing and living mathematics. It's truly extraordinary and fascinating and it really opens up the possibility for students to use their own conceptual framework for math."

The Grade 1 students created dream catchers. Their learning goals focused on persistence, observation, collaboration as well as the math concepts of directionality, patterning, counting, spatial reasoning, measurement and estimating.

The Grade 3/4's learning centered around traditional trap lines as well as jigging and square dancing. The students learned about respecting nature, traditions and culture as well as the math focus of spatial reasoning, transformational geometry, graphing, data management, patterning, measurement, estimating and number sense. The students were exposed to how the Elder is able to remember everything about a trap line and the local geography and then transpose the information onto a

2-dimensional map. Shelly Tom talks about the teachings from the Elder. "The Elder from Red Lake mentioned that there are many cultural teachings and traditions that are involved in trapping and the importance of our youth to go and learn in the bush and in nature. The students also learned about some of the medicines that can be found in the forest and how to identify different animal tracks. It was so nice to get to know the Elders in Red Lake and make a connection with them. They have so much to teach and share."

With the square dancing and jigging the team brought in a caller and a professional violinist from the C-Week Band as well as the Whitefish Bay Singers. The students figured out how they could represent the lessons on paper and drew the directions with drawings. At the end of the day, the class taught their entire school how to square dance and jig.

Jordan Temple talks about why he enjoyed the project. "I really enjoyed working on this project. One of our Ministry goals is for teachers to incorporate more spatial reasoning activities into schools. This project brought spatial reasoning into every aspect and activity and valued the teachings that were used."

Here are some pictures from the Ways of Knowing project:

Students in Grade 1 are showing off thier dream catcher designs
	The Elder shows the students how to cook over an open fire while out on the trap line.
	After learning the techniques of Square Dancing and Jigging the grade 3/4 students took the leadership role and taught the entire school all that they had learned.
A huge thank you to our very special field services team. This team of students were our field reporters covering the story about Ways of Knowing. They captured pictures and videos from the Jigging and square dancing and also conducted interviews. Amazing job reporters!