For my EDL 829 course we presented interactive activities that connect to our course text Teaching Each Other: Nehinuw Concepts & Indigenous Pedagogies (Goulet & Goulet, 2014). The interactive activity that I shared was a version of a student check in called Rose, Bud and Thorn — however in my classroom we have taken to calling it “Give Them Their Flowers”. This exercise is to focus on things that we are excited about or proud of in our classroom, so we’re celebrating. I wanted to post the instructions here for anyone who reads this blog post but wasn’t in my EDL 829 course.
The slight variation that I include that may not be in other versions of Rose, Bud and Thorn is that we add an arts twist by teaching everyone how to draw their own flower. Here is the image of the steps I used:
We each drew our own version of our Rose, Bud and Thorn and then labelled them. Then we wrote about each one. The rose is something you want to celebrate, the bud is something you are looking forward to and the thorn is something that you have overcome and are proud of. Students can then feel free to share one, all, or none of their responses. As a teacher I take them all in and respond to them to in writing to make connections and have things that aren’t subject or academic related to talk to each student about.
If you want to try this activity you can follow along or you can use this drawing of mine as a template and just print it out for students:
If you want more details, a one pager on how to do the activity or want to see some of the research behind this activity you can download the folder here:
Will Whitten 
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