When We Were Alone
by David Robertson & Julie Flett
Description:
This Picturebook is recommended by Empowering the Spirit and is a Governor General's Literary Award Winner, McNally Robinson Best Book for Young People winner, and a TD Canadian Children's Literature Award finalist. The author is a member of Norway House Cree Nation.
Publisher's description (Highwater Press, 2016): When a young girl helps tend to her grandmother’s garden, she begins to notice things that make her curious. Why does her grandmother have long, braided hair and beautifully coloured clothing? Why does she speak another language and spend so much time with her family? As she asks her grandmother about these things, she is told about life in a residential school a long time ago, where all of these things were taken away. When We Were Alone is a story about a difficult time in history, and, ultimately, one of empowerment and strength.
Resource format: Picturebook
Age recommendation: Pre-K to Grade 2
Keywords: identity, clothing, braids, Cree, language, Residential School, empowerment, strength, resiliency, Residential Schools, reclaiming Indigenous identity, Cree language, kinship
Year of publication: 2016
Publisher information: Highwater Press
Teaching and Learning Ideas
Our team collaborated with new teachers, alumni of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program, to create teaching and learning plans for texts in this website. With audiences ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Post-Secondary, lesson plans across this resource address a wide range of school subject areas, inclusive approaches, and Indigenous education topics, such as the revitalization of Indigenous languages. As this website was designed with Undergraduate Programs in Education instructors, as well as teachers in mind, connections to UPE courses have been flagged on each lesson plan. These lessons are intended as a starting place for educators, to help you envision ways in which you might bring Indigenous literatures, as well as ways of knowing, being, and doing, into your teaching contexts. Please adapt, use, and share these lessons in ways that are generative for your teaching practice. We offer our sincere thanks to the dozens of new teachers who gifted us with these creative ideas!
When We Were Alone Grades K-3 Lesson
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