Room B7 Discover and Discuss Presentation #5 Due: Friday February 22nd

Topic: Teach the Class About Your Heritage

As February is Heritage Month, we have decided that this would be a wonderful opportunity to tap into the wealth of cultural identities and backgrounds existing within our classroom communities by creating a Classroom Heritage Quilt during the month of February. The classroom quilt will consist of one square per student representing her or his cultural background and identity. Every student will be provided with an identical piece of Bristol board that they can design and decorate (with the help of family members) to represent their individual cultural heritage. Suggestions for items that you might want to discuss with your child to include on their square might be family crests, national colours/symbols, culturally relevant textiles or artefacts, emblems, pictures of foods, special attire, etc. Students whose heritage is comprised of several different cultural backgrounds are encouraged to divide their square accordingly in order to represent all aspects of their family or personal ancestry. Doing so will help students better understand and appreciate the many relationships existing within and amongst our global community. This will also inevitably bring to light some interesting and unexpected commonalities between themselves and their classmates. Students should come prepared to briefly explain aspects of their heritage quilt square when they are presenting (i.e., the meaning of the symbols found on their square, interesting fact about their heritage, something they learned while preparing their square).
Have fun!

Mr. Gale
The idea and inspiration for our Classroom Heritage Quilt has come from the national touring of The Quilt of Belonging. The Quilt of Belonging can be found at www.quiltofbelonging.ca