image/svg+xml

Middle School Resources

Native American Heritage Month 2025 Graphic

Please see the resources below.

 

Native American Heritage Month

Full Lessons

10 Tips to Decolonize Your Classroom 10 Tips to Decolonize Your Classroom By Teaching Native American History
Native American Responses to Environmental Challenges
Acknowledging Native Heroes All grades
Muwekma Ohlone People Middle and High School

Texts

Poem "Remember" by Joy Harjo This lesson plan provides a sequence of activities that you can use with your students before, during, and after reading “Remember.” Use the whole sequence, or any of the activities, to help your diverse learners enter, experience, and explore the meaning of the poem.
Poem "Carrying Our Words" by Ofelia Zepeda Produced for K-12 educators, Teach This Poem features one poem a week from our online poetry collection, accompanied by interdisciplinary resources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. The series is written by our Educator in Residence, Dr. Madeleine Fuchs Holzer, and is available for free via email.
Poem "Nimbawaadaan Akiing/I Dream a World" by Margaret Noodin The following activities and questions are designed to help your students use their noticing skills to move through the poem and develop their thinking about its meaning with confidence, using what they’ve noticed as evidence for their interpretations.

Videos

Native Pride Dancers Authentic regalia, rhythmic drumming, skilled footwork: Experience the excitement of a Native American powwow! World champion fancy dancer Larry Yazzie of the Meskwaki Nation and the Native Pride Dancers perform music and movement celebrated by their American Indian cultures. Enjoy the beauty, athleticism, and majesty of the Fancy Dance in this performance featuring free-style movement, dance regalia, and traditional songs from the Northern Plains. Enhanced by indigenous vocal and flute music, Buffalo, Eagle, Round, and other dances celebrate various animals, crops, the sun, and the wind.
Saving Rare Indigenous Language In partnership with the National Science Foundation, the NEH has funded the Documenting Endangered Languages project. This video from the National Science Foundation demonstrates how language researchers use new technology to listen to an indigenous language sample recorded at the beginning of the 20th century. You can learn more about how students in Oklahoma have engaged in preservation work by recording songs, oral histories, and conversations about traditional activities and their collaborations with experienced linguists to analyze the recorded speech.
6 Stories Celebrating Native American History and Culture This video is 6 stories highlighting the preservation of Native culture through food, art, and nature.

Additional Resources

Lesson Plan Not "Indians," Many Tribes. Native American Diversity What comes to mind for your students when they think of "Indians" or "Native Americans"? In this unit, students will heighten their awareness of Native American diversity as they learn about three vastly different Native groups in a game-like activity using archival documents such as vintage photographs, traditional stories, photos of artifacts, and recipes. One factor influencing Native American diversity is environment. Help your students study the interaction between environment and culture. Note: The link to the Kwakiutl whale recipe is not valid. Here is another link to the recipe.
Lesson Plan Te Ata Fisher: The Award Winning Chicksaw Storyteller Te Ata Fisher was an award-winning Chickasaw actress known for her cultural storytelling.
Lesson Plan Indigenous Women Gallery Walk Students will participate in an escape-room-style gallery walk. They will divide into three groups and work through activities in three different “rooms,” each focused on a figure from Unladylike. There are also three accompanying videos.

Grade Level Standards

Join us for our Celebrating Schools Special Meeting 3/17/26 Click Here for more information.