Totem Pole Project

Fly

In this lesson, each student got to create a piece of a totem pole! To begin, we got to choose which animal we wanted to create. I chose to pick a fly. We got to color the little image we picked so we could refer back to it when making the bigger image. Our animal had to be symmetrical so we folded our paper in half so each side of it matched up. We were instructed to have at least one part of our animal be 3D. On my animal, I chose the tongue and the wings to be 3D. Since this activity was a group project, all of the people in our group had to decide on what color we wanted for our background. We chose brown. Once all of us in the group put brown paper behind our animal, we got to glue them together to make a totem pole! At the end, each of us had to make a notecard that included the following: our name, what our animal was and what is symbolized, and the types of colors we used.

Extension activities: Students could use this activity for social studies when discussing different tribes and cultures. Instead of using animals they could try making other symbols that represent a culture. The students could also create a poem about their totem pole.