Friday, October 02, 2015

Grade 7 LA - Residential Schools

In Grade 7 LA students got the opportunity to learn about Residential Schools and then create movies using stop motion or green screen technology to depict what it was like for the people who attended these schools.

Below is a sample of work that was created by students in this class. This specific sample of work was created by Mikayla.

A Description of the Project

Residential Schools 
In our scene there is a girl named Shi Shi Etko who has just got to the Residential School and she has no idea what's going on on because she doesn't speak English. The Nuns just gave her new clothes and a new haircut. Now it's time for her to go to her first class of English. In the class there is a Nun named, Sister Mary who is going to help her learn English. When Shi Shi Etko got into her class room she sat in her desk and waited. In front on Shi Shi Etko there was a book, the book was written in English and Shi Shi Etko had no idea what it said, so she just sat there. Sister Mary walked in and wrote the world English on the chalk board, then she said "speak English only"! Shi Shi Etko was very confused and just sat there and said "NO" in her language. After that Sister Mary said "excuse me"?! Shi Shi Etko was still very confused and she started to feel uncomfortable.

Sister Mary yelled at her again and said "speak English only"! Shi Shi Etko replied back in her language again and said "I don't understand". Then Sister Mary said "because you spoke your own language you must come here for your consequence" and she walked to a table where a thick black leather strap was and grabbed it. Shi Shi Etko stood up and walked towards Sister Mary, Sister Mary grabbed Shi Shi Etko and hit her hard with the leather strap. Shi Shi Etko cried "NO, OWWW"! Then Sister Mary stopped whipping her and walked back to the front of the room. Shi Shi Etko went back to her desk and cried a little bit, then Sister Mary said "NEVER speak your own language"! I think this effects me in lots of ways. first of all it makes me think of how lucky I am that I don't have to be in a Residential School. I also think Residential Schools shouldn't of been invented and I'm glad we have Orange Day because I think it's important to recognize the children that had to go to Residential Schools. If this was me and I was in a Residential Schools I would probably get whipped a lot because I have a lot of attitude sometimes and I wouldn't be able to control it because being in a school like that for to long would probably make me go crazy and make me snap at one point.

Stop Motion Video of the Mikayla's Story

Residential Schools Assignment Reflection
I really liked this assignment because we got to use clay and be creative/express our self by making our own scene about life in residential schools. We also got to create a little movie from our clay scenes in stop motion. I also really like that we got to choose who we wanted in our group instead of just being put in group we didn't really want to be in. I feel like I got a lot of stuff done. My group and I worked very productively together and we didn't fool around too much and we still had fun. We also finished what had to be done. By doing this assignment I learned that the children that attended the schools got beaten a lot and that is awful. Another thing I learned was 150,000 children attended the Residential schools and there were about 130 Residential Schools across Canada. I also learned that Residential Schools started in 1840 and last school closed down in Saskatchewan in 1996 and if you think about it, it wasn't to long ago and that is very sad because we are now a very caring and inclusive society and yet the government continued to support the Residential Schools until two decades ago. Now that we know about the Residential Schools hopefully the government won't make the same mistake again.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
To learn more about Residential Schools and the impact they had on indigenous culture please consider reading the

To honour the victims and survivors of Residential Schools is is important that we all listen to the stories and learn more about the tragic circumstances of not too distant past in Canada.

If you don't have time to read it another way to review this important document is by listening to it. To download the different sections of this report go to this link.

Mr. Mead

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