Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning. And the research bears that out: A 2018 study found that when teachers deliberately foster a sense of belonging by greeting each student at the door of the class, they see “significant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior.”

This post outlines ideas from teachers for ensuring that every student in the classroom feels like they belong.

Some of the activities included take less than five minutes. They’re divided up among the grades, but many can apply across all of the years from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Money StoriesGrounding Indigenous Youth in the Lessons of their EldersWhat is it?Money Stories is a customized money management training program for Indigenous youth. The program combines Indigenous Elders speaking about their experiences with money, with facilitator-led activities about money that are relevant to youth. “We (Elders) need to help the next generation out of poverty. Young people have gifts and talents that should be used. I believe that preparing them for the future, one day they’ll go out into society with the experience and confidence to know they can make it.” Elder Lucy Guiboche.Money stories is delivered in eight chapters. Topics covered include Money, My Community & Me, Building Assets, Goal Setting & Problem Solving, Gathering Information, Budgeting, Banking, and Credit.

In this multi-day activity, students explore environments, ecosystems, energy flow and organism interactions by creating a scale model biodome, following the steps of the engineering design process. The Procedure section provides activity instructions for Biodomes unit, lessons 2-6, as students work through Parts 1-6 to develop their model biodome. Subjects include energy flow and food chains, basic needs of plants and animals, and the importance of decomposers. Students consider why a solid understanding of one's environment and the interdependence of an ecosystem can inform the choices we make and the way we engineer our own communities. This activity can be conducted as either a very structured or open-ended design.

The purpose of this Guide is to enhance your students' knowledge and appreciation of the Black Canadian experience, drawing from Lawrence Hill's award-winning historical fiction, The Book of Negroes, the remarkable journey of Aminata Diallo and the historic British document known as the "Book of Negroes." Structured around themes of journey, slavery, human rights, passage to Canada and contemporary culture, this Guide asks students to examine issues of identity, equality, community, and nation-building in both a historical and contemporary context.

Students learn that ordinary citizens, including students like themselves, can make meaningful contributions to science through the concept of "citizen science." First, students learn some examples of ongoing citizen science projects that are common around the world, such as medical research, medication testing and donating idle computer time to perform scientific calculations. Then they explore Zooniverse, an interactive website that shows how research in areas from marine biology to astronomy leverage the power of the Internet to use the assistance of non-scientists to classify large amounts of data that is unclassifiable by machines for various reasons. To conclude, student groups act as engineering teams to brainstorm projects ideas for their own town that could benefit from community help, then design conceptual interactive websites that could organize and support the projects.

An inquiry-based project to map the land in your community. The key concepts in this unit are grounded in Indigenous beliefs of interconnectedness, connectedness, and respect for all things.

The driving inquiry questions for this unit are:
1. How can respect for the land be shown?
2. What do we look for when setting up a camp?
3. What stories or teachings are connected to key locations in and around our community?
4. How has the land around our community changed over time?
5. Who do we share our community’s lands with?

Grab a tissue and watch the video.

What a wonderful gift to give your students.

Enjoy.

Students in grades 4-6 engage in a series of activities (both inside and outside the classroom) designed to inspire a sense of environmental stewardship. Each of the activities is intended to have children explore their profound connection to nature and experience the power of individual and collective action.

Students explore the daily choices, they, their families, their school and their communities make; the impact of those choices on nature; and the role they and others may take in protecting nature.

The activities are fun, hands-on, and thought provoking. Students have opportunities to share what they are learning with their fellow students, family, and community and to create their own “class foundation” to collectively act on their concerns and passions.

The resource consists of 16 cross-curricular lessons on a range of issues from which teachers may select according to the dictates of their time and curriculum.

This Grade 3/4 project include options for I DO, WE DO and YOU DO. Students will examine communities, cultures, traditions, art, etc.

This video resource, created for teachers and students in Saskatchewan, offers insights from four cultural groups: Anishinabee, Cree, Métis, and Dene. It includes personal stories that emphasize the significance of the seasons and how they influence community life and traditional practices. You’ll discover reflections on the essential roles of elders and knowledge keepers, as well as the importance of kinship, family, and community connections. The resource also addresses Treaty education, storytelling, traditional foods, ceremonies, land-based learning, along with personal narratives about residential schools. By sharing these stories and perspectives, we enhance our understanding and knowledge as we progress on the journey of truth and reconciliation.

A way to help yourself feel more positive and connected.
A way to reach out and support someone you’re worried about.

Safety Planning
Practicing Gratitude
Suicide Prevention Information
Conversation Starters on Suicide
Resources

*available in Google Play & Apple Store

"This guide offers two different approaches to teaching Encanto:

1. Show a few specific clips, paired with discussion questions.
2. Show the entire film, paired with a more in-depth lesson plan (below) and handout.

Feel free to use either approach, or even combine the two into one lesson (or an entire unit) based around the movie. If you only have a single class period, it might be ideal to show just a few key clips mentioned below. If you decide to help students delve deeper into the topic, you might show the entire film and have more extensive discussions over multiple days. Of course, you could also use some combination of the two, adapting the lesson to best suit your class's needs."

This lesson and active viewing guide are aligned with CASEL 5 and you can help your students:
*develop interests and a sense of purpose
*show the courage to take initiative
*resist peer pressure
*resolve conflict
*show concern for others' feelings
*reflect on community
*identify solutions

In this service-learning engineering project, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design an assistive eating device for a client. More specifically, they design a prototype device to help a young girl who has a medical condition that restricts the motion of her joints. Her wish is to eat her favorite food, pizza, without getting her nose wet. Students learn about arthrogryposis and how it affects the human body as they act as engineers to find a solution to this open-ended design challenge and build a working prototype. This project works even better if you arrange for a client in your own community.

Students begin by reading Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax" as an example of how overdevelopment can cause long-lasting environmental destruction. Students discuss how to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of human industry. Student teams are asked to serve as natural resource engineers, city planning engineers and civil engineers with the task to replant the nearly destroyed forest and develop a sustainable community design that can co-exist with the re-established natural area.

*activities, galleries, lessons, tutorials, course collections!
200 resources!

"Educators and students across Canada can access ArcGIS software, support and teaching resources for free. All our resources are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, and we encourage educators to share and adapt our resources to work with their courses.

ArcGIS is a powerful tool for learning in social studies for various reasons. It allows students to tell stories by visualizing, analyzing, and interpreting data related to location and place. This can be incredibly valuable in social studies, where understanding the spatial relationships between historical events, cultural phenomena, and natural resources can help students develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the world around them. Check it out"

"Humor, goofiness, joy, fun — these were actually vital to developing a creative classroom culture. When I taught middle school, we had a wordplay wall at the back with ridiculously bad dad jokes (things like “fire drill” and “slow jams” and “graduated cylinder”). We had Easter Eggs hidden throughout the classroom. We had our own version of a Rick Roll. If someone asked you to “share a link,” you had to “Cher a link” instead, sending them to a music video from Cher. "

This excellent resource includes videos, and some reading. It's very engaging - and fun! It's all about bringing joy to your classroom - which happens to spark community, creativity and foster risk taking! Win win win!

To help students understand pigs and their products, producers, and consumers by using various nonfiction books, and activities.

This T-Chart for IN6.1 (b) has students compare and contrast family roles/community roles and responsibilities of:

First Nations Peoples
Inuit
Metis
Atlantic Provinces
Country border Atlantic Canada

In the summer of 2015, filmmaker Scott Parker travelled to the great plains of southern Saskatchewan to produce 10 short documentary films based on community-generated ideas. Subjects, themes, even interview questions were all selected using significant community input, and each film was screened with the participants for their feedback and final approval.

"Empower students to become leaders in their school communities and prevent bullying with Honor Code, EVERFI’s bullying prevention curriculum. Honor Code takes a practical approach to bullying prevention by empowering students to create positive change in their school community, whether they’re engaging in bullying, on the receiving end of it, or witnessing it in their school.
Empower students to become leaders in their school communities and prevent bullying with Honor Code, EVERFI’s bullying prevention curriculum. Honor Code takes a practical approach to bullying prevention by empowering students to create positive change in their school community, whether they’re engaging in bullying, on the receiving end of it, or witnessing it in their school."