Teacher notes
Fatty Legs is a true story told by a Survivor, so this unit is built around listening rather than simulating. There are no role-plays, every perspective prompt stays with the people in the book, and the teacher guide has a full page on teaching it with care, including support lines. It fits Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and works any time of year.
Quick answers
Is there a French version? Yes: Les bas du pensionnat.
What pairs well with it? I Am Not a Number or Sugar Falls for a longer Truth and Reconciliation unit.
Priced in Canadian dollars, so it costs less here than the US-dollar price on TPT. Instant download after checkout.
Full details
This Fatty Legs novel study never asks students "what happened?" Every prompt asks what it means, why people did it, how the authors told it, and what students would have done.
Olemaun Pokiak wants one thing: to learn to read. So in 1944 she leaves her family on Banks Island for the outsiders' residential school in Aklavik, where her braids are cut, her name is changed, and one nun gives her the only red stockings in the school.
The unit follows the Arctic year Olemaun lives through. It has six parts named for the ice and the light: Sun Returns, Open Water, Midnight Sun, Freeze-Up, Returning Light and Break-Up. Each part has a menu of prompts, a hands-on activity, and trackers. The trackers follow the book's birds, her two names, Alice in Wonderland, the seasons, and every "stone moment" when she refuses to break.
It is built for a true residential school story. There are no simulations or role-plays, and every perspective prompt stays with the people in the book and the evidence. The teacher guide includes a full page on teaching it with care.
WHAT'S INCLUDED (58 pages, letter size)
Student booklet (45 pages)
6 part menus with 36 prompts (6 per part). Students pick two per week from five lenses: Whetstone, Other Eyes, Take a Stand, Writer's Craft and Scrapbook.
6 hands-on activities everyone does: The Rock Argument, Warnings on the Way (map the five-day journey), Taken + Kept, Read the Silence (compare four messages home), Power Lines, and The Stone Inside.
5 trackers: Bird Watch (motif), Two Names (identity), Down the Rabbit Hole (allusion), Ice + Light (time and place) and Stone Moments (resistance).
Pre-reading hook (What's in a Name?), Know Before You Go background, and an anticipation guide with a sealed prediction.
Organizers: Sharpen It (claim, evidence, so what), Chain Reaction (cause and effect), Between the Lines (silences), Two Kinds of Knowing, and a relationship web.
Socratic seminar prep ("Big Questions") with 9 questions and a moves tracker.
6 final project choices, including scrapbook pages, a name story, a two-voice poem, a radio feature, a picture book for younger readers, and a Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action project.
6 profiles of the real people in the book, 5 toolkit templates (debate builder, craft spotter, two-voice poem, storyboard, interview + research planner) and a 24-word vocabulary page.
6 exit tickets, a project planner, a single-point rubric and two Level 1–4 rubrics.
Teacher guide (13 pages)
Visual implementation map: the whole unit on one page, week by week, with what to read, the shared activity, and what else happens that week
Start-here checklist, unit map, and a 7-week plan (3-week option included)
Teaching with care: content notes, do's and don'ts, terminology, and 24/7 support lines
Full plot key, plus a key to how the ending is planted
Look-fors for all 36 prompts and 6 activities, with extension prompts
Parent letter
Ontario Language (2023) curriculum links, assessment plan, and History/Social Studies connections
WHY TEACHERS LIKE IT
No recall questions, so students can't answer by skimming.
The same weekly routine every week: read, activity, two prompts, trackers, exit ticket.
A one-page implementation map shows the whole unit at a glance. Pin it up.
Made for a residential school memoir: it centres the Survivor, avoids simulations, and gives guidance for the hard scenes.
Works for Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, or any time of year.
Every page number is a clickable link in the PDF, so it works on paper or on screen.
White pages, designed to photocopy in black and white.
PLEASE NOTE Students need their own copy of Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton (Annick Press, 2010). References use chapter numbers and short quotes, not page numbers, so any printing of the book works. This is an independent teaching resource and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the authors or publisher.
Teaching in French? Les bas du pensionnat is the same unit en français. Pair it with the I Am Not a Number novel study for Orange Shirt Day.
