Native American Totem Poles

In today's class, we looked at Native American totem poles. We learned about the history of totem poles, as well as the symbolism behind each animal shown in totem poles. We also discussed a current artist who makes totem poles; he said he uses his art to feel connected with his people, as well as to say that his people are still here. We then looked at our project. We would make our own version of an animal that is usually shown on a totem pole, but use bright colors and construction paper. We would work with other people at our table to decide on a background color, and the teachers would put together our animals into a group totem pole after we were done. Pictured below is the thunderbird I made. Thunderbirds in Native American totem poles represent thunder and lightning, as well as storms. I chose a blue/orange color scheme because it is complementary and I like those colors. 

I think a good extension project of this activity would be to incorporate more learning about symbolism. Perhaps it would be good to have a symbolism worksheet for students to fill out, depicting different totem poles. You could have students decipher what specifically each totem pole represents. You could also have students do this once their projects are connected into one big totem pole. For example, my table could have figured out what all of our animals mean, then put that as a description for our totem pole. It would be interesting also to have seven different people to a group, and have each student make their animal one different color of the rainbow. This way students could arrange their animals to follow the color wheel and learn about color.