Challenge Sample Planners

September 29, 2020 John Montilde

This week we announced the #PlanningWithWingaruandMrJ Challenge – an initiative to get teachers thinking and talking about including more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in their classrooms. The response has been amazing! I am so excited at the number of teachers who have said they are going to take part! I can’t wait to see what everyone does.

If you missed the initial posts about the Challenge, check out the previous blog, which has more information and the planner template: www.wingaru.com.au/blog/planner-challenge. You should also head on over to Mr J’s Learning Space to follow his journey.

In the words of Mr J “the #planningwithwingaruandmrj challenge is all about taking that first step and deciding to think more intentionally about what we do and how we can naturally incorporate First Nations content into our teaching and share the journey together to inspire and support other educators as they try to do the same”.

To give you some ideas on what you might do to bring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in each week for term 4, we have created 3 sample planners that I have attached here. These planners, one for each stage, illustrate just some of the different approaches you could take in including a weekly First Nations perspective.

Local Focus - Use term 4 to explore your local community. You could explore:

Country – how did the local mob use a river? or get to know the clans of the language group;

Language – what is the local language? Can you find examples of it? Is there a local speaker you could invite in?

Land management - what bush tucker grows in the area? What tools would likely have been made given the material available in the local environment? What sustainability practices were likely practised?

Perhaps you could look at how the local people are represented today. The possibilities are endless.

Build lessons around a single resource – this example shows how you can build experiences around one topic or resource. Consider the elements of your focus topic and build additional experiences to explore the elements. In our example we look at turtles but the same approach could be taken with many other subjects. Think about the key learning areas and how they may be present in your chosen resource.

Focus on a single topic/unit – this example shows the possibilities of choosing a topic you are learning about in your class and exploring it from many angles which supports students to develop a strong understanding of the related issues. This works well for topics where students should consider different opinions and perspectives on an issue as they develop their own thoughts on it.

You could apply any of these approaches to any stage with some tweaking or apply the approach to any topic that suits what is in your plan for term 4. Don’t be afraid to mix it up! The possibilities are endless – don’t forget to share your ideas by tagging @wingaru_education and @mr.j.learning.space