Putting Together Your ‘Show Up’ Project

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live, the Dharawal people and the Whadjuk Boodjar people. We recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

We are all learners when it comes to Getting up, Standing up and Showing up for First Nations culture, heritage and voices.

This is the second year we have been a part of Wingaru’s Challenge for teachers as allies.

The Wingaru Challenge is an annual free event where teachers are encouraged to explore the NAIDOC theme across term 3. We challenge teachers to bring related content into the classroom each week of the term.

The Wingaru Challenge is designed to be flexible and for YOU as the teacher, to implement in the way that suits your students best.

With that in mind, there is no right or wrong way to get your students involved in Wingaru’s project this year. We have listed some suggestions to help you get started:

Introducing the project:

Immerse students in quality literature to build the field. Picture books written by First Nation authors are a great place to start. Here is a wonderful list put together by First Nation educator, Ash Gibbs.

Create or draw attention to a space in your classroom where you have an Acknowledgment of Country. If you teach younger students, this is a great episode of Play School that can support their learning.

Listen to your students’ voices – What are they asking questions about? What are they interested in? What do they want to learn more about?

Can you involve any local First Nations community members? A parent? A staff member? Someone else in the community?

Ideas on presentation:

The amazing thing about the 21st century classroom is that learning can be presented in so many varied ways. As a teacher who spent many years in Grade 3 and 4 classrooms, I love to give my students a choice on how they would like to share what they have learnt. Some ideas include:

A video or trailer created with iMovie
A series of ‘social media’ posts that include an image and caption that explains a story or learning
A TikTok style video (short clips) with a voiceover explaining their learning
Create an assembly item to share learning with the school and parent community
Draw an infographic to summarise learning
A visual project – such as creating a poster or short book

Tips if you are stuck:

We can relate to this all too much. If you find yourself stuck here are 3 things you can do:

Connect on social media with someone on the Wingaru Challenge team (we have listed them below with clickable links). We are all in this together and want to help.

Try completing a sample project yourself. Sometimes actually doing an activity that we are expecting from our students can give us more clarity.

Visit Wingaru’s blog for inspiration. Wingaru also offer a paid resource that could be used as a guide. Check out those resources here.

If you are feeling overwhelmed or worried about teaching the ‘right’ thing, start with this blog post that we wrote in Collaboration with Lesley Woolhouse from Wingaru.

Finally, share your project

Part of showing up and amplifying change is sharing your student’s projects. Some ways you can share your projects include:

In the school newsletter
On social media
By displaying your project/s in your school
At a school assembly
Host an event for your school community to attend and see your projects
Have a student representative team visit a local preschool to share their learning.

If you share your projects on social media using the tag #ShowUpProject and tag us so we can check out the amazing work your students are doing.

Now is the time to go and register (it is FREE) as well download your FREE planner. Get started here!

What our planner looks like?

We know it can be daunting taking on a challenge like this. But that is where the challenge team come in. Throughout Term 3, we will all be sharing on social media different ideas and tips to help you.

Here is what our planner is looking like (so far) for Stage 1 – that is grade 1 and 2. we hope this gives you some inspiration to take the plunge and join the challenge.

Stage 1 planner

Follow the challenge team members on instagram:

It is time to Get up and investigate

Stand up and celebrate and

Show up and amplify!

What to read next:

Where do I start when Embedding First Nations perspectives in my classroom

Wingaru Education’s blog (First Nations educator)

Miss Gibbs blog (First Nations educator)

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Putting together your ‘Show Up’ project – Wingaru Challenge 2022