March 8 - 12

Nova Scotia

We have selected the places we wanted to see around Nova Scotia and area, but our first stop was to travel back in time to learn about the Acadians. It started with the story Fiddles and Spoons: Journey of an Acadian Mouse by Lila Hope -Simpson.

The story is told from the point of view of the mouse who lives under the floorboards of an Acadian family in Grand Pre.  We followed this story up with Le petit Acadien: An Acadian Resource by Edith Comeau Tufts and that was when our journey really started back in time. In the story Fiddles and Spoons, the mouse mentions not understanding what the soldiers were saying... we brainstormed why this might be and our answers ranged from because she is a mouse, maybe because the soldiers were so much taller to a different language. We discovered that the Acadians spoke French and were from France originally. With this information in hand we looked at Le petit Acadien: An Acadian Resource with interest and a challenge in front of us. It was written in French. Our discussion focused on how we could understand the information if we did not know a language. We decided that we would look at the pictures to explore and discover information about the Acadians. From our exploration we created categories to collect information about, but we wanted to be accurate and that was where Google Translate came in. It was exciting to see students select a category like food, clothing, celebrations, roles/responsibilities, learned from the Mi'kmaq, resources and other. They typed in the words and quickly shared the translation with their partners and others in the class. Over the next few days we listened to the author, Edith Comeau Tufts share her stories about the Acadians and why she wrote the book. After collecting information about the Acadians our next adventure will be to share our understanding through stop motion animation. Each group chose an area that interested them and over the next couple of weeks we will be learning how to create a storyboard and then sharing it through stop motion. 

Upcoming Dates:

March 19 - Un-Birthday Day