How to Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with Your Class in November

And Why It's So Important...

Did you know that November is Native American Heritage Month? This is a time to educate students about Native American history and their part in US history. November was chosen, because often the narrative of Thanksgiving doesn’t include the point-of-view of the Indigenous people.

This month, I plan to talk to my students about Native American history and help them learn about their present. This includes highlighting people who are Native American trailblazers.

But How. . . ?

An easy way to present this information to students is through this digital resource for Google Slides. I will assign it to my students and they will have time during our reading rotations to explore and learn about prominent Native Americans. We also will discuss some of it together during our current events or social studies time.

Students can click through the Google Slides presentation and read/listen to articles about each person and then watch a short video.

At the end, I have questions that students can answer as well as an activity choice board for students to learn even more.

You can click here to view this resource.

I am hoping that I have time to also have my students dig deeper into one of the people from the slideshow. We are working on informative writing, so a short biography would be great practice!

I plan to use my biography writing mini-lessons to help support students as they write a biography about one of the people highlighted in the slideshow!

This is a great way to tie in reading skills, current events, social studies, and writing!

You can click here to view the biography writing bundle!

My biggest hope is that all students have time in November to learn about Native Americans and are able to reflect on the progress and strides they have made!

Have you celebrated Native American Heritage Month before? How did it go? What did your students learn?