The Ride of the People of the Tides

This past Monday I worked with Brian and Sara on a "Native American Project, " which was part of our  unit on Jigsaw Learning. The tribe that our group was assigned was the Tlingit tribe. I am actually very proud of myself when it comes to this project. I put in a lot of effort when it came to designing the PowerPoint and looking up information. My only concern was that we were only given the weekend to put everything together, and that was not enough time. If I was given another week and a chance to get  together with my group, then we could have prepared better. However, I will not dwell on what could have or should have been, but what was.

                                          The Tlingit Tribe 

                                                          

Before research, I knew nothing about the Tlingit tribe. In fact, I never even heard of the tribe before research. I could not  pronounce the name either. My research consisted of finding out about  the tribe's history, geography, and culture. There was a lot of interesting facts to be discovered about the tribe, and I tried to incorporate as much of it as I could into the PowerPoint.

                                                                            History 

When it comes to the Tlingit's people's history, it was fascinating to learn where they originated from and how they came to be the Tlingit tribe. For example, I learned that they were found 11,000 years ago, how the Russians took over their land, and how the Alaska Native Brotherhood was formed. The picture on top is a symbol of Alaska Native Brotherhood. I did not go into the specifics of the symbol's significance when it came to the research, but I thought it would be a nice touch to add to the presentation.

                                                                     Geography    

        

When it comes to the Tlingit people's geography, most of them settled along Southeast Alaska. Now they are scattered along British Columbia, Yukon in Canada, and as mentioned before, Southern Alaska. The neighboring tribes of Southern Alaska is Haida and Tsimshian. The maps with the locations are located above.

                                                                     Culture  

What I found the most interesting  and what took the most amount of time was researching  the tribe's culture. What I found the most interesting about the tribe's culture was learning about their language and dancing. I found an interesting video on language that explains how the Tlingit's spoke.  I personally found the language funny because the way that they pronounce their words is unlike anything  I have ever heard before. It makes sense why there are only 1,000 native speakers left. Most of the tribe members who do speak the language are elders, and they are trying to keep this "endangered language" alive by teaching it to their children, who will by turn teach it to their children. However because of American influence, most children are speaking English as their primary language. The video on the tribe's language is below. I cannot help but laugh every time I view it!

             
What also interested me about the Tlingit's culture was their dancing. Like many other tribes and people, they use dance as a means of communication, but also as a way to gain access into the spirit world, to tell a story, to ridicule an opponent, or apologize. I would never think to use dance as an expression of any of these things, so it was interesting to gain an insight into the world of the Tlingit's culture when it comes to dancing. I found an interview from a man and a woman about their own experiences with the Tlingit dance. For example, I learned that when it comes to dancing, women mostly just sing and sway. When the man was interviewed, he said that he danced with the Raven Clan and dancing made him feel proud. I will post the interview below. It is an interesting read, and worth spending time on.

The two interviews!

              


                                                          Wrapping up

I am going to give myself three likes and 1 wish in order to reflect on how I thought me and my group did!

Three likes 

I like how I engaged students with a survey for pre-assessment, and a video in order to have students understand what the Tlingit's language sounded like. In addition, I liked how Brian utilized the Kahoot! in order to assess knowledge at the end.

I like how the presentation was split evenly among the three of us. Even though Brian and I did all of the work in putting the presentation together, Sara was all on board and proved herself when it came to presenting the material: the history and geography. I did culture, and Brian did clothing, shelter, and famous people. We all built off one another, and I liked that.

I like the information we included in the slide. It was all informative, engaging, and teachable to elementary school students.

1 wish 

Actually I have two wishes, but my main wish is that Sara could have been included more in putting the presentation together. I am not blaming her in the slightest, but I wish that effective communication took place. In addition, I wish that we could have had more time to work on the Native American tribe presentation in class. Both of my group members are commuters. I am a resident. Communicating through Google docs was great, but  I wish that we had more face to face interaction which is what cooperative learning is all about.

Here are pictures and PowerPoint from the lesson: 

The Ride of the People of the Tides!