Final Reflection

Coming into this course I wasn't sure what I would learn. I don't remember much about Social Studies from my own experience, but I did remember that I didn't like it much, so when I started this course I was worried that I wouldn't enjoy the content. However, this turned about to be one of my favourite courses. I learned that Social Studies is not just about the past, but also about current events. I liked that we can compare historical events to events in the past, and how these events are similar or different. I also like the emphasis on incorporating cross-curricular connections. It makes Social Studies and the other subjects more meaningful because it can be applied to real-world situations. This course has opened my eyes to a subject that I am excited to teach with an endless possibilities of topics I can talk about with my students. I am excited to find new ways to engage my students.   

Unit Plan reflection

I collaborated with 3 other peers to create a a grade 6 unit plan titled What does it mean to be Canadian? 
It took us quite a few weeks to complete 12 lesson plans, including a culminating task. I'm glad that I was able to work with a group to create this unit plan, because we put a lot of work into it. There were so many things we had to get done for each lesson, so I am grateful I had time to figure out how to create my first unit plan with like-minded and creative peers. 

We agreed on the Big Idea (What does it mean to be Canadian?) unanimously, but decided what topics we would cover in 12 lessons was the difficult part. We wanted our Big Idea to be open-ended to start our inquiry with our students and get them thinking, but when we started to plan our lessons it was vague and we didn't know where to start. We consulted the curriculum document and had many brainstorming sessions before we narrowed it down to 12 individual lessons:

1.  An introduction lesson to open the inquiry - why do people come to Canada? 
2. How has Canada’s physical geography contributed to Canada’s identity and how Canadian communities have settled each region. 
3. What aspects of Canadian identity is represented in art? 
4. What does it mean to be multicultural? 
5. Different groups may experience the same development or event in different ways.
6. What is inclusive? Is education a right?
7. How do different regions of Canada influence the food you eat?
8. How has the development of Canada affected our environment?
9. How do stereotypes and prejudice affect a person or a community?
10. Why do people come to Canada as tourists, short-term visitors, and immigrants?
11. How has Canada been represented in the media in history? How has that view changed? 
12. Culminating task - What does it mean to be Canadian?

We split up the work so we only had to do 3 lesson plans each, but we still consulted each other and brainstormed ideas, so we never had to do too much on our own. We included everything we learned during our Social Studies course:

• Cross-curricular - all of our lessons attempts to connect two, or more, subject areas to make cross-curricular connections
• Inquiry based learning - we open with an inquiry and investigate our question throughout the unit 
• Financial literacy - In lesson 6, we explore the costs of education and what it takes to attend higher education in Canada. We compare (through role playing) what the costs are for various groups in Canada, and graph our results.
• Environmental education - In lesson 8 we examine perspectives on the environment past and present
• Field trips - In lesson 9, we will be traveling to Brantford to learn how the distorted images of First nations peoples in the past and present, have affected their communities and identities.
• Primary resources - we investigate maps, articles, talk with guest speakers, and other primary documents throughout this unit
• Equity and inclusive education - we respectfully investigate the perspectives of multiple groups in Canada and allow students to identify bias, and foster respect for all people

Overall, I think we worked really well together and were able to bring out creative and innovative ideas to create the best unit plan we could. I'm very proud of the work we did together and am excited for when I get to actually teach this unit to students in the classroom.

Environmental Education

They talk a lot about learning and using longitude and latitude because it is universal. This relates to learning about maps in Social Studies. Environmental education also relates to FMNI culture because it talks about how everything is connected and how important nature is in our lives. It is extremely important for our students to learn about the environment so they care about it. They need to care about it so they can help save the planet in the future and get their families/community to care about the environment as well. Learning about it out in the field is more engaging for the students because they become part of the environment and can actually see how they connect to it. They will care more and learn more if they can see and do things themselves instead of being stuck in a classroom. Things become real to them when they are outside and see nature ‘in action’.

·      At my placement school the grade 7 and 8’s were doing an inquiry for science to build an environmentally friendly playground that had sturdy structures, but were also cost effective, fun, and eco-friendly. Even though this was for science, I think it could also be applied to Social Studies and the environment. They had a guest speaker come in from a company that creates these types of playgrounds. I loved this idea because it got the students excited about building structures, but also creating environment friendly playing equipment for the school community. I think that this would be a great way to incorporate environmental studies that apply to cross-curricular studies, as well as counting as a field study outside of the school.

Financial Literacy

·      I think that Financial Literacy is an interesting topic, especially since it was not covered when I was in school. There are many benefits to teaching it to elementary students. One of these benefits is putting students in different situations so that they can learn about the economy and understand how important this topic is to them. I think its good to let students see things from another perspective where they can explore different economic situations that they may not have known about before. I think that many students do not fully grasp the concept of money, and many take it for granted, so I think its great that we are teaching students about it, making connections to their lives and their community so that they can fully understand it. I think its very beneficial for students to learn about financial literacy earlier in life. Like on of the teachers in the video, I wish I had financial literacy when I was young so that I could have made wiser decisions with my own finances. I think its very important to be financially competent and be aware of where your money is going when you buy something.

·      Financial literacy can be integrated into many different topics in all grades for Social Studies. The main topic is budgeting in everyday life, but it can be incorporated into other subjects. For example, students can look at basic human needs and how much living costs, or how much it would cost to start a recycling program in their community. Any topic that involves money (i.e. the Olympics example used by Zoe) can be used to integrate financial literacy into the lesson. Students need to be aware of how much money is valued in the world and they need to learn more about it any chance they can get. More examples of where/when to incorporate financial literacy into a Social Studies lesson can be found at this EduGains site. It gives examples of financial literacy in lessons for grade 4-12 and includes a PDF of each lesson plan.

Innovative Lesson Review

One of our assignments was to find a Social Studies lesson plan to review. The lesson plan had to be innovative, which was difficult to find. I searched through EduGains and Google to find a lesson plan that was relevant to the unit plan that I am working on, and also one that I considered as innovative. I finally found one that I liked, which had to do with refugees. 

View innovative lesson here. 

This lesson is innovative because it gets students to think critically and learn information on their own and while collaborating with their peers, rather than the information being taught directly by the teacher through worksheets and PowerPoint. It allows students to use the provided resources and find resources of their own to learn about citizenship and refugees in their community and in other parts of the world. It allows students to make connects to current events and understand what is happening in Canada with the Syrian refugees.This is a critical literacy lesson and can easily be adapted to many contexts involving immigration, refugees, displacement of people. It is a fantastic lesson, not only because it brings in 21st Century tools and networking, but it is engaging and has real world implications and it is current.

This lesson can be adapted from my Unit Plan because we are focusing on the question “what does it mean to be Canadian?” and since we are currently hosting refugees, we can adapt this lesson to incorporate how Canada is helping refugees. I would change some parts to become more relevant to our unit and talk more about immigrants as well as refugees, and perhaps focus more on how welcoming Canada is to everyone. This lesson also connects to one of our Big Ideas “The experiences of diverse communities in a challenging environment have contributed to a Canadian identity that is complex and ever changing.” Canada is diverse and the communities are welcoming new members in the form of refugees.

View Innovative Lesson Review here

Unit Plan Central Question and Culminating Task

I am working with 3 of my peers to create a unit plan. My group is looking at Strand A, Heritage and Identity: Communities in Canada, Past for grade 6. We are focusing on 3 Big Ideas:

• Shared goals, values, attitudes, and experiences from our collective Canadian identity.
• Stories of the past, told from different perspectives, continue to shape Canada today
• The experiences of diverse communities in a challenging environment have contributed to a Canadian identity that is complex and ever changing.

Our overarching question is “what does it mean to be Canadian?” We developed this question after the week 4 which focused on inquiry and we had to come up with questions for the inquiry presentation, which asked us “what it means to be Canadian”. This question stuck with us because it was challenging for us to come up with a definite answer. We thought it would be a good inquiry question for grade 6 students to research and look at their own identities as Canadians. We have two lines of inquiry which ask what it means to be Canadian today, and how has history contributed to our Canadian identity? Our culminating task will be a website welcoming people to Canada.

My group has decided to have our students create a website in groups to welcome people to Canada. This website will welcome and inform tourists, permanent visitors, and immigrants to Canada and will answer the overarching question of what it means to be Canadian. Throughout the unit, students will create an artifact at the end of every lesson and add it to their website. These artifacts will represent Canadian culture and history and will help to define Canadian identity. We have 12 lessons that will look at different aspects of Canadian history, culture, and life, and at the end of each lesson students have to produce an artifact in their group and add it to their Welcome to Canada website. We plan to separate students into Regional Groups so each group will focus on a different region of Canada and share it with the class. The Regional Groups are:

• Newfoundland
• Maritimes
• Quebec
• Ontario
• Manitoba and Saskatchewan
• Alberta
• British Columbia
• The Territories

Students will create all of these products throughout the unit, but will only choose 6 of the following to post on their website:

o   New Canadian citizen test

o   Map

o   Paragraph about Canadian symbol

o   Multiculturalism 

o   Filmed Skit

o   Data chart/budgeting (math)

o   Menu

o   Letter outlining personal impacts on an environmental issue

o   Create a self portrait

o   Google form

o   Culminating task - FAQ

By the end of the unit the students should have all of these artifacts that represent their region and will hopefully answer the question “what does it mean to be Canadian?”