Digital Collections

Topic #1 Canada and Culture: An introduction

Time: 1-2 period(s)

Objectives:

1. Students will recognize that Canada is a multicultural country made up of people with a variety of languages, religions, and customs.
2. Students will strengthen their sense of cultural and political identity.
3.  
   • 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:

1. Digital Collections: Canada Photo Collection
   ( http://www.schoolnet.ca/collections/tourism/ )
2. Magazines - particularly Canadian Magazines
3. 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:

1. 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)
2. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

1. 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:

1. Mark the collage that each student prepared.
2. Mark the graph.