"I Am Native" Activities

The Billings Public Schools elementary IEFA coach, Carolyn Rusche, introduced me to this wonderful book, I am Native by Violet Duncan.

It is a beautiful story, with lovely photographs and illustrations. It lends itself well to encouraging students to think about themselves and their families, and the types of things they do with and have learned from their own families. There is a video of Violet reading the story here. Keep reading for activity ideas!

Seesaw Activity

Assign this Seesaw activity and have students write about what they do with members of their families. They can use drawing tools to illustrate the pages, or make it a family project and encourage them to bring in photos from home to add to the activity.

WriteReader Book with Photos

Students can create their own "I Am Me" books in the book making tool WriteReader. This would be a great at home connection project, with students working on it at home to add photos, or asking parents to digitally send you photos to add to the projects.

To match the painting-like style of the images in I Am Native, I used the free app Adobe Paint Can to create this effect on our photos. It only took a second or two to convert and save each photo into a painting using this app.

You can use the photos to have each student create her own book, or put together a class book with each student having their own page.

Click to read Sloan's story

Alternatively, students can draw their own images on paper, then use the camera in WriteReader to add the photos to their books. Or, use Book Creator and the built-in drawing tools to write and draw students' stories.

Stop Motion Studio

Students choose an activity they enjoy doing with a member of their family, then illustrate using paper, markers, crayons, etc. Students should create a background, then characters and pieces to move in their stop motion movie. For example, students might draw the outdoors in a special place they visit with their family, then draw their family members as characters. They will cut out the characters to move against the background in their stop motion movie.

Students then use the Stop Motion Studio app to take photos of their project, as they move the characters across the background. Students should be encouraged to take as many pictures as possible; we did about 20-30 pictures for these projects in 2nd grade.

When their movies are finished, they can use the share button to export as a movie to Seesaw. Below is a quick tutorial on using Stop Motion Studio. Find more stop motion animal project ideas and resources on the PBS Learning Media website.