Just for some context, let me briefly go over some of the details about me and about the placement. I worked in a classroom in an inner-city school for 5 weeks. I was lucky enough to have a full class set of iPads and a particularly tech-savvy associate teacher, this was to be a major influence on my teaching. Having only relatively recently returned to Canada from Europe, this was my first experience with elementary social studies. Having never been taught this content, I was doing my best to learn the subject in order to stay far enough of the students to guide this unit. Thankfully, this was less of a hindrance than I was expecting, as I will describe later on.
My associate introduced the social studies curriculum by telling me that it tends to be get quite “dry” and “boring.” A good start, right? She said it tends to make for a lot of reading because the students often haven’t retained much of the subject knowledge from grade 3. So now it was my job to find a way to take this content and make it interesting. My first big challenge was set. Along with this, finding ways to purposefully integrate the technology that I had was also a consideration - let’s call this Challenge #2.
Another particularly imposing challenge (Challenge #3) I found was finding age-appropriate (and Canadian!) resources. After the 2013 Social Studies curriculum was unveiled in 2013, the First Nations unit was moved from grade 6 to grade 5. Harmless, until you realize that almost all of the resources out there were made for the grade 6 level. Everything from websites to the cornerstone classroom texts (e.g. the Nelson Education series) were made with that audience in mind. As I soon discovered, these were just too advanced for most of my students to read for the content knowledge. Luckily, these resources were great for me – I was learning all I needed to know – but where was I going to find content for my students?
After seeing an interesting idea from the instructional coach, I started the unit off focussing on getting the students to understand the big ideas – interactions, cause/consequence, and conflict/cooperation. I introduced a causal model to the class (for more information see this post). We discussed “what causes people to get along?” This tool was great for getting students to consider how their ideas connect (which would also be great for brainstorming and organizing their ideas as part of the Language curriculum!) and particularly the concept of how different factors can influence things to take place.
So, primed with an understanding of the big ideas, it was time for some real social studies learning. A little disheartened by the lack of interesting resources that my searches were turning up, I decided I would start off easily . . . by designing my own Webquest. I was hoping that the variety of tools and the group-based activity would make the texts more palatable. I compiled a list of links (some of which can be found at the end of the post) and questions, and posted them on the class blog for students to access. After we created an introductory KWL chart, the students were off on their way. In all, the Webquest went over quite well. We returned to our KWL chart, and also had a discussion about how to find information from different media formats effectively (since some groups struggled with this).
What really sold the students on the unit was a role-playing activity we set up at the edge of the forest near the school the next day. Away from the roads and buildings, the scenery was a little more believable for what it may have looked like for the inhabitants of the land (albeit ones with iPads this time). The students pretended they had just arrived in this new land and needed to decide how they were to live off the land. We provided them with a few different ‘resources’ that they had brought over, and hid a few additional ones around the area. Students were to photograph all of the different elements they would need to last the winter. This raised a lot of interesting and creative ideas as the students built their schema and tried to imagine life at this time. The students used this knowledge, their wonderings and their photos the next day to do some additional research into life for the peoples of this time period.
Having learned about the Europeans, students spent the next week getting into some inquiry-based learning on the First Nations peoples. We used the New World Colony app and a variety of new links and asked students to brainstorm some of the key ideas that they wanted to know about each group.
Students kept logs of their learning in Google Docs, and shared their information with other students working on the same First Nations group. The students had created and sent me a summary of their group, which I compiled and shared with the class. The homework was to read and post about what they learned about the similarities and differences between the groups. As a fun activity on the Friday, the students built Kahoot quizzes about their groups and played them as a class using this information. These were great fun for both myself and the students – I had some of them bouncing with excitement trying to answer the questions to be in first place!
I began to integrate some other subjects into our learning after this point. The students began journaling from the point of view as either a European or First Nations person. The students discussed their lives, and what it was like to meet and work with (or not get along with) the other group. Key to this was the National Film Board movie “Rendezvous Canada, 1606” (a movie which inspired a lot of conversation) and the artwork of J. D. Kelly (a Canadian artist who painted scenes of contact between Europeans and First Nations). We ended the unit with integrating some drama tableaux.
So, looking back on my experience, I was pleased to see that I was able to get away from the “boring”, text-based lessons my associate was concerned about. While texts still featured in my lessons, I adapted many of the resources I found to make them more understandable for the students. Although this took time, it was worth it. Creating audio recordings of books allowed me control over what was said, and was a great source of differentiated instruction for my students with IEPs. I also found it helpful to use videos and podcast (with written transcriptions), interactive activities (apps, experiential learning, etc.) and visual works (paintings, movies, etc.) to get students to understand the topics without the need for text. The technology here was invaluable for overcoming these challenges, and I look forward to the opportunity to work in a classroom like this again. As I continue to find resources and new ideas, I hope to revisit and update this unit and have it reflect my growth from this first practicum experience
A few links to check out:
https://app.discoveryeducation.ca/player/view/assetGuid/04DA0A3A-E157-45CC-846B-AD843867E41C
http://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/files/K-12/Curriculum/social-studies/Gr5/people-stories-of-canada/Grade-5_People_Ch4.pdf
http://mrnussbaum.com/explorers/john_cabot/
http://www.teachingushistory.org/lessons/age_of_exploration.html
http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com <-- (a particularly informative site!)
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