Fifth Graders are learning about Native Peoples of America including Native Peoples of the Southwest, Great Plains, Eastern Woodlands, and the Pacific Northwest. Totem poles are monuments created by Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest to represent and commemorate ancestry, histories, people, or events. Students reflected on the qualities that they and four other family members possess and the animals that might represent those attibutes to create their own totem poles. They designed their totem poles by taking inspiration from the ones they studied in class from the the Peoples of the Pacific Northwest.