Ladysmith Secondary SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith

School Name: Ladysmith Secondary

School District: SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith

Inquiry Team Members: Kalvin Beuerlein <Kalvin.Beuerlein@sd68.bc.ca>
William Taylor <wtaylor@sd68.bc.ca>
Dave Travers <dtravers@sd68.bc.ca>

Inquiry Team Contact Email: dtravers@sd68.bc.ca

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE

Focus Addressed: Connecting students to local flora and investigating Aboriginal uses of the flora.

Inquiry Story: We provided two opportunities for students to connect with local flora.

1) Our Outdoor Education class had a project where students went on a scavenger hunt looking for various local flora. Ideally we would have had one of our First Nations Elders guide the students in identifying the flora and talking about the uses, but COVID interfered. Instead students used the plant knowledge cards, provided by Pacific Northwest, for their own investigation. Cards were used for flora identification, their Aboriginal uses, and their Hul’qumi’num name.

2) In our Land and Language based learning class, the class went on a field trip to Cable Bay trail and located various plants guided by the teacher. An Elder from our community joined the class for a meal where traditional food, harvested from the land, was shared. An example of one of the foods was speenhw (camas), a traditional starch. We cooked the meal based on a recipe we found in the book, Two Houses Half Buried in Sand, shared by our Elder’s ancestor Siamtanaat.

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