- This is a vignette of one summer in a 10-year-old Cree boys life before he is taken to residential school for the first time. It provides insight into the lives of a first nations family in 1944 and their connection to the land. The text is accompanied by beautiful illustrations.
Author: Larry Loyie
Genre: Biography
Keywords: first nations, indigenous, residential school, Cree
Appropriateness for Junior Grades: The text is written for a low junior level of reading and the book is only 44 pages including illustrations so it is a quick read. The accompanying artwork may help to draw in more hesitant readers and makes the story more vivid. It’s an appropriate starting point for introducing the topic of residential schools to a younger, more sensitive audience and for helping them to understand the impact those schools had on the lives of indigenous children and their families for generations.
Sample text: https://www.amazon.ca/As-Long-as-Rivers-Flow/dp/0888996969#reader_0888996969
Classroom Suggestions
What could be taught using this text in terms of content, themes, and/or literacy?
- Content: Understanding how indigenous peoples lived on the land and functioned as families prior to residential schools. Understand a different culture and consider the impact that going to a residential school had on children.
- Themes: Impact of residential schools on families lives, learning by doing (different learning from classroom learning), Cree culture, respect for and learning from elders
- Literacy: Understanding autobiographies, biographies and memoirs.
Student Activities
Activity 1
Have students write a short composition about how their life would have changed if they had been sent to a modern-day boarding school at the age of 10. How would affect their relationship with their siblings, parents, extended family? How would it affect their spare time, sports, hobbies, friendships, etc.? After they’ve completed a first draft, have them exchange their work for peer review and then revise their own work to improve it. After first revision submit draft to teacher for feedback. Make further revisions to work and submit completed assignment.
Alternative topic: they could choose to write about Lawrence’s life and what it might have been like if he hadn’t been sent away.
- Link to Language Curriculum Grade 6: Writing 1.2, 1.5, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7. Reading 1.1, 1.5, 1.6.
Activity 2
This activity cross links to the Arts curriculum to engage students in the text who are more visual and to deepen the understanding of all students who engage with the text. Look at each of the pictures in the book. Select 5 of them and discuss them in detail. What is your first impression of the image? What feelings does the image convey? Look at the faces in those pictures. What do their expressions convey? Light is an important design element in many of the pictures. How is light used in each of the pictures you’ve chosen? Look at the colours What else catches your attention in the pictures? Why do you supposed the author chose to include the photos?
- Link to Arts Curriculum: Grade 6 D2.1
Activity 3
Art: use watercolours to produce a work similar to the illustrations in the book that illustrates an event in the book of the students choosing. Pay close attention to the elements of art; in particular colour, value and shape which are key elements of the illustrators works. See Pastro, H.A., (2005) for more detail on understanding these elements of art.
- Link to Arts Curriculum: Grade 6 D1.2