Students in PEI's French schools and French immersion classes will be learning more about the history and stories of the Island's Acadians when they return to school this fall.
About 300 years' worth of stories, in fact - thanks to the introduction of a new social studies book titled L'Acadie de l Île-du-Prince-Édouard: 300 ans d'histoire, written by Island authors Georges Arsenault and Linda Lowther.
"The book is setup in a timeline from the 1700s right up until 2020," says Paulette LeBlanc, a French Social Studies curriculum leader with the Department of Education and Early Learning.
LeBlanc, along with her colleague Carolyn MacKinnon, has been busy developing new curriculum to accompany the book.
"The goal is to give the teachers ideas and interesting activities they can do at different grade levels," LeBlanc says.
The curriculum will be delivered in modules, starting in Grade 6, and will build on the previous year's lessons - through to Grade 10.
"So, they will be covering most of the vignettes in the book over those four or five years," LeBlanc says.
The book is a chronological series of short stories, or vignettes, that highlights Acadian culture and important key figures in the Island's Acadian history. It's presented in a way that's more "student friendly" than the Acadian history resource teachers used previously, says LeBlanc - a book written in 1980 that was primarily for adult readers.
"It had quite a bit of information, but it wasn't really written for children. It wasn't written in a language for students," she says.
"This is the first book with pictures, illustrations, and short stories that's written in a way that children can understand."
