• Age: 4 to 6
• Grade: p to 1

This teacher's guide is designed to help classroom teacher's use the graphic novel series, Tales From Big Spirit, by David Alexander Robertson. The guide provides detailed lessons that meet a wide range of language arts and social studies goals, integrate Indigenous perspectives, and make curricular content more accessible to diverse learners. It is organized into three sections.

The first section includes:

• general instructional ideas for deepening readers’ comprehension of text.
• a framework to further develop students’ thinking about history.
• information about aspects of graphic novels and how to use them in the classroom.

The second section includes:

• specific instructional ideas and suggestions.
• an overview.
• detailed teaching and learning sequences (before-, during-, and after-reading format).

The appendix includes:

• strategies and reproducible classroom materials that support and stimulate student learning.
• historical images that may be reproduced.

Katya Adamov Ferguson (she/her/hers) is a mother, artist, researcher, and teacher. Katya currently works as an early years support teacher in several schools in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is passionate about teacher professional learning in the area of Indigenous education. She sees potential in the arts to create ethical spaces to mobilize complex topics with both young children and adults. Katya is also a PhD student engaging in curriculum redesign and place-based inquiries, and is branching her arts-based research into public spaces. She has authored several teacher guides with Portage & Main Press and is co-editor of Resurgence: Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom.

Katya Adamov Ferguson's profile page