NAIDOC Week Classroom Resources for Primary Teachers

NAIDOC Week Classroom Resources for Primary Teachers

NAIDOC Week is one of the most important weeks in the Australian school calendar — a national celebration of the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It runs every year in the first full week of July, which means in most jurisdictions it falls during the school holidays. That is exactly why preparation in Term 2, with a full-week or two-week unit running into the holidays, has become standard practice in primary classrooms across the country.

This guide focuses specifically on classroom resources — printable lesson plans, posters, reading texts, Acknowledgement of Country templates and assessment-aligned activities. If you are looking for shorter session-by-session craft and engagement ideas, our NAIDOC Week activities guide is a better starting point. Both pages pull from the same marketplace inventory, but this page is built for teachers planning a substantive unit of work rather than a single afternoon.

Planning a NAIDOC unit that goes beyond surface culture. The single biggest critique of school NAIDOC programs from First Nations educators is that they default to surface engagement — colouring in dot paintings, eating bush tucker biscuits, watching one short documentary — without doing the harder work of teaching the histories, sovereignties and contemporary lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. A strong primary unit balances three threads: cultural knowledge taught with appropriate protocols, historical understanding including truth-telling, and contemporary celebration of First Nations achievement.

Practically, that means your unit needs more than one resource. A typical Stage 2 or Stage 3 NAIDOC unit might include a printable lesson plan sequence, a class set of differentiated reading texts, a poster set for the classroom walls, an Acknowledgement of Country template the students adapt for their own context, a research task focused on a contemporary First Nations leader (athlete, artist, scientist, parliamentarian), and an art response that uses a non-appropriative technique such as collage, weaving or natural-materials sculpture.

For Foundation and Year 1, the unit looks different — more storytelling, more song, more attention to local Country, fewer abstract concepts. A picture-book read-aloud with discussion, a Welcome song from a local Elder if your school has that connection, and a class art piece responding to a Dreaming story (always using stories that have been shared with permission for educational use) is a solid week.

Protocols and what to be careful with. A few non-negotiables that experienced teachers wish someone had told them earlier:

Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Country are different. Welcome can only be performed by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person from the local Country. Acknowledgement can be performed by anyone, and your students should be taught how to write and deliver one for the Country your school sits on.

Symbols matter. Avoid resources that ask non-Indigenous students to copy symbols, animal totems or dot-painting techniques without permission. There are plenty of artists who have created classroom-licensed pattern packs that are explicitly cleared for educational use — those are safe. Generic dot painting how-to sheets often are not.

Language matters too. The terms Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, or First Nations, or Indigenous, are all used in different contexts. The local Aboriginal Education Consultative Group in your area can advise on what is preferred locally. When in doubt, ask the Aboriginal Education Officer at your school or your network.

Connecting NAIDOC to the curriculum across the year. NAIDOC Week is most effective when it is not the only week First Nations content appears in your program. A planned cross-curriculum priority approach weaves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures into HSIE, English, Science and the Arts across all four terms, with NAIDOC Week as a celebratory peak rather than a one-off insertion. The marketplace listings below include resources you can use across the year, not just in July.

Browse the marketplace. The carousels below feature NAIDOC Week resources from teachers across Australia, including First Nations creators where they have made their work available. Look for resources tagged with year-level matches and consider running a two-week unit that builds knowledge before the celebration peaks. For related pages, see Reconciliation Week activities, Harmony Week activities, and Anzac Day teaching resources — all share themes of national identity and shared history that strengthen each other when taught across the year.