Topic #1 Canada
and Culture: An introduction
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Time: 1-2 period(s)
Objectives:
- Students will recognize that Canada is a
multicultural country made up of people with a
variety of languages, religions, and customs.
- Students will strengthen their sense of cultural
and political identity.
-
- Students will be able to apply simple
statistical analysis tools to analyze a
set of data.
- Students will be able to speak coherently
and correctly about the topic of cultural
diversity in Canada.
- Students will learn to evaluate recorded
information and assess the reliability of
specific sources of information.
Resources:
- Digital Collections: Canada Photo Collection
( http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/tourism/
)
- Magazines - particularly Canadian Magazines
- Canadian Geography text book
Purpose: To introduce students to the concept
of Cultural diversity and to explore their ideas and
conceptions of Canada as a country.
Ideas:
- Two ongoing items that students could work on
throughout the unit are a journal and a
scrapbook. In the journal students could: a)
identify their own differences and
distinctiveness, b) discuss how they feel about
the topics being discussed in class, c) discuss
how their opinions on certain issues have been
reinforced or challenged, and d) include any
thoughts or feelings that they have experienced
during the unit. The scrapbook would be for
newspaper articles that students find about
cultural diversity. Students should read
critically and should write a brief response (See
Appendix for notes on Critical Reading and
Scrapbooks)
- Have students examine some of the photos in the
Canada Photo Collection
( http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/tourism/
) with the following questions in mind:
"What is Canada?" and "Who is a
typical Canadian?". When they have had the
opportunity to examine some of the photos, bring
them back together and have them discuss with a
partner how they would describe Canada and how
they would define a Canadian. Have them pair up
with another pair and share their ideas. After
this you can bring the class together as a group
and brainstorm all the ideas on the board
resulting in two mind maps or concept maps for
Canada and Canadian.
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- Have each student make a collage of pictures that
he/she thinks represent Canada. It can be done on
a piece of cardboard cut into the shape of a
maple leaf.
- To get students into the unit, it is a good idea
to discuss some other definitions as well. These
include culture, race, ethnic, religion,
language, etc. These are words that students will
be using frequently during the unit and it is
important that they understand what they mean so
that they do not use them inappropriately.
Culture: - a group of people that share the same
customary beliefs, social forms and material traits. A
cultural group can be a racial, religious or social
group.
Race: - a group of people that share a common
ancestry.
Ethnic: - pertaining to a person's race or national
origin.
Religion: - commitment or devotion to religious faith
or observance.
Mother tongue: - the language first learned and still
understood.
- Students can graph the mother tongue and/or
ethnicity of the students in their class. The
students can find out their different backgrounds
from their parents and then share them with the
rest of the class. The data could be graphed in a
bar graph or in a circle graph. Students can
compare the class results with the findings for
Canada. Having students' graph the information as
a circle graph can be taught as a skills lesson.
Students would have to be taught to change the
number into a percent of the total and then
multiply by 3.6 to change it into degrees.
Evaluation:
- Mark the collage that each student prepared.
- Mark the graph.
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