Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion School

To develop and expand K-12 Immersion site curriculum by hiring a culture-based education alignment specialist to work with the Niigaane curriculum development teams. These teams will work on relevant content based instruction for students in grades K-6, as the school does not serve grades 7-12. The project will also provide fluent speakers in the classroom. culture-based education alignment specialist will also have a portion of job duties dedicated to ensuring proficient, relevant use of language in classroom by working with the fluent Elder members of the teaching teams to create and insert appropriate Leech Lake lexicon and vocabulary phrasing sources. Niigaane will also develop appropriate testing and evaluation procedures. The culture-based education alignment specialist will work with an English Language Arts teacher to align the English lesson with scope and sequence appropriate to the second language development by working closely with the teaching teams to ensure alignment with the Ojibwe language immersion objectives. Additionally, there will be outreach activities in the Leech Lake communities and attendance in regional conferences and camps.

The second year of this grant will focus on the expansion of onsite curriculum. A curriculum writer will coordinate a ultural team by working with Elders in the Ojibwe language and Niigaane Teachers to develop Ojibwe language content based instruction starting at grade level kindergarten and expands through grade six. The curriculum writer will also coordinate and facilitate a cultural team led by Elders who will ensure proficient and relevant use of language in both curriculum and lesson planning. The curriculum writer will also align academic content concepts in Ojibwe language including the development of scope and sequence according to appropriate grade levels K-6. The goal is to combine academic knowledge while building Ojibwe language fluency, thereby preparing students to grade 7 in mainstream schools.