Letter to Parents: Social Studies

In order to promote transparency of practice and home-school connections, parent communication is an integral part of my practice. I communicated with parents regularly throughout my practicum experiences, and was reminded of the importance of this during my Social Studies course in Teachers' College. Below is a sample letter detailing my (hypothetically) upcoming social studies unit.

Winter 2015

Dear Parents, Guardians and Students,


Welcome to Mr. Smith’s grade 5 classroom at Brock Elementary School!

As our class begin exploring our social studies unit on ‘First Nations and European Explorers in New France’, the grade 5 team and I would like to take this time to share our goal for this term and for our social studies teaching and learning this year.


We have worked tirelessly over the past few weeks designing this new unit. The Big Ideas, or overarching themes, for this strand of social studies focus on interrelationships, different perspectives and change over time. This means we will be investigating how different groups interacted, how they saw each other and how they shaped the beginnings of Canada. Our students will act as researchers, working with historical sources and texts and looking to understand the importance of these different events.

As part of the Ministry of Education’s vision for social studies, we intended to create a unit which allows our students to become “critically thoughtful and informed citizens who value an inclusive society” (see the Ministry of Education Curriculum). As our students have begun discussing the diversity of our classroom, and begun to learn to manage conflict and cooperation themselves, we thought this was an excellent time to draw parallels between our experiences and those of people living in early New France!

As part of our commitment to integrate technology into our classroom, we will be using iPads as a tool for our unit. We will be letting our students take the lead in their learning through our inquiry- and game-based instruction. This will allow students to engage more with concepts and ideas that resonate with them. We have a number of apps and websites which we will be using to learn from. As always, we will have a variety of independent and group projects, and an exciting experiential learning day out along the trails behind the school!

Check out this introductory Kahoot quiz and see if you can beat your student(s)!

http://bit.ly/1CmFfC9

Please feel free to contact us anytime if you have any questions or concerns. We look forward to working with you this year!


- Mr. Smith and the grade 5 team

Brock Elementary