Grade 5: BC Communities and Their Resources

Suggested Procedure
1. Introduce the idea of "community" as a shared experience of a particular place. Ask students to describe the school and their neighbourhoods as communities and to brainstorm what elements define a community.

2. Using the introductory discussion as a way of moving toward a more complex notion of community, explain how a specific geographic environment influences human culture(s), and, conversely, is influenced by it. The definition that emerges would ideally stress these complex interactions through time and emphasize how technologies play a role in shaping both culture and environment.

3. Assign groups or pairs of students to "travel" to the communities of Chilliwack, Wells, and Yale by accessing the websites about these communities. Alternatively, copy relevant pages from the websites for distribution and desk-based work.

4. Make copies of and distribute the student handout I am the Land for students to work with in groups or pairs. Instruct the groups or pairs to answer the questions by using the websites or the copied material. Some of the questions require them to engage in creative thinking about the life experience of these British Columbia towns, their past and present communities, and their use and alteration of the natural environment.

5. Collect the student handout I am the Land when the groups or pairs have completed their work. Use the answers as a basis for class discussion of the various aspects of life in the communities, including, for example:

• the economic and social impact of a sudden influx of immigrants or migrants on Aboriginal peoples and/or a small established community
  
• the development of modern technologies and their effects on the natural environment
  
• the alteration of natural balances developed over long periods of time in contrast to sudden and dramatic interventions by human activities and communities
  
• the preservation of the past, why and how communities variously recall their pasts, and how approaches to the past might differ.

6. Focusing on the diverse past and present economic activities in the towns (agriculture in Chilliwack, mining in Wells and Yale), stimulate a discussion on how natural resources affect the interdependence of communities. Highlight the impacts of different activities on the environment, and show how they not only change how people live but alter the land itself.

7. In order to introduce the notion of technology, ask students to brainstorm examples of technologies in their daily life, using the settings that they come into contact with (e.g., the home environment, the wider community, school), and then to imagine how, or if, these technologies could be replaced either by simpler or more complex ones.

8. Ask students who have accessed the Wells and Yale websites to describe the technologies used to exploit natural resources during the gold rushes in those towns and student who have accessed the Chilliwack website to describe the technologies used in traditional and in modern farming. Engage students in a discussion about how these technologies themselves use and derive from natural resources.