Teachers conferences resources
Last month the Nova Scotia Museum with our friends from the Nova Scotia Archives and the Nova Scotia Provincial Library, presented at both the Social Studies Teachers Association of Nova Scotia and Association of Science Teachers conferences. Check out our session descriptions below and links to resources to enhance your lesson plans.
Mona Parsons: Heritage Day Hero
Martin Hubley, Curator of History Nova Scotia Museum & Barry Smith, Archival Assistant NS Archives
Mona Parsons, a native of Wolfville, NS who worked as an actress and nurse, is being commemorated on provincial Heritage Day 2018 for her role working with the Dutch Resistance in 1940, aiding downed Allied airmen in Holland at the start of the Second World War. Parsons showed incredible tenacity throughout her subsequent capture, trial and imprisonment by the Nazis, and her amazing escape from a prison in Germany in 1945 back to Allied lines in the Netherlands. There she was taken by locals, remarkably, to meet a regiment from her homeland, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. Join Barry Smith from the Nova Scotia Archives and Martin Hubley from the Nova Scotia Museum to learn more about her story and the resources available for teaching the story of Canadian Second World War resistance fighters, such as Mona Parsons and other Canadian agents who worked behind enemy lines with various Resistance movements.
Explore our resource list on Mona Parsons and other Resistance movements
Gaelic in the Classroom
Katherine Macleod, Highland Village Collections Assistant & Stacey MacLean, Gaelic Animator
Within the last five years, there has been a great effort to connect students to the founding cultures of Nova Scotia through the new streamlined curriculum. Baile nan Gàidheal | Highland Village recognizes the needs of teachers to have ready-made cultural resources that can be used in the classroom. This workshop showed teachers how to introduce Gaelic in their classrooms using a Gaelic Workbook. The workbook draws on Nova Scotia Gaelic idioms and themes found throughout the culture. Activities, lessons-plans and resource websites will provide students a chance to learn about the rich history of the Gael in Nova Scotia while engaging children in hands-on, interactive and fun cultural experiences, which we will demonstrate in this workshop. As well, we will outline the in-class and on-site programs available at Highland Village. Each program provides engaging activities that meet several outcomes as outlined in the most current version curriculum.
Explore our Gaelic cultural resources
Teaching Difficult Knowledge: Interpreting the Halifax Explosion for Young and Diverse Audiences
Roger Marsters and Mark Dunphy, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic/Nova Scotia Museum
The 100th anniversary of the Halifax Harbour Explosion presents educators with a series of challenges. How can we interpret the difficult realities of the disaster for younger audiences? How can we do so in a way that reflects the diversity of the communities impacted by the blast? This workshop offered activities and insight into how these concerns have been addressed in the past, and how they can inform our pedagogical approaches in the present. While focused on a specific series of events, the approaches outlined here will be applicable to a range of learning situations that are vital to understanding today’s world.
Learn more about the Halifax Explosion from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
Life in the Marine Biome
Andrew Hebda, Curator of Zoology, & Elizabeth Spence, Interpretive Researcher
This workshop helps teachers better understand, and teach about, Nova Scotia’s rocky shore, the diversity of organisms living there, and interconnections among those organisms. Teachers interacted with real specimens, participated in hands on activities they could replicate, as well as explore information and visual content through a new online resource based on the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History’s marine aquariums. Resources and activities explored will be useful for many different grades, including biology 11 and grade 6/7 science outcomes. With guidance from Museum Naturalists, Andrew Hebda and Liz Spence, this workshop helped teachers make a splash in their own classrooms.