Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sense of self, community, and place: Students will reflect on their own identity and place in Canadian society. They
will reflect, discuss and analyze the structures of Canadian society and how they relate to traditional cultural identity as
well as to popular culture.
Engaged Citizens: Students will reflect on the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democratic society. Students will
discuss the responsibility of present-day Canadian society to correct the wrongs of past generations.
Developing thinking (DT): Students will critically assess the treatment of various cultures & ethnicities within Canadas
past and present and reflect on how inequities have or have not changed and to question what privilege in Canadian
society looks like.
Develop identity and interdependence (DI&I): Students will reflect on their personal identity and how their identity is
situated within Canadian society and how that may affect their life.
Developing literacies (DL): Students will express understanding and communicate what Canadian identity means to
them using visual and written means.
Develop social responsibilities (DSR): Students will engage in communitarian thinking and dialogue regarding the
treatment of minorities in Canadian society and by government institutions.
Learning Outcomes
What relevant goals will this unit address?
(must come from curriculum; include the designations e.g. IN2.1)
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
1. Appreciate that all humans have the right to have their personal worth and dignity accepted and validated.
2. Understand that a variety of injustices have been committed by the Canadian government and mainstream
society against different groups of people and that these injustices need to be recognized and steps must be
taken to rectify them.
3. Understand that a cultures worldview contains their ideas, beliefs, and values and effects how it interacts with
other cultures.
4. Understand that past societies have established and conducted policies based on social models that are
unacceptable by present day standards and appreciate that generations of people have suffered as the result of
these social policies.
5. Understand that Canada, like many younger nations, is made up of immigrants from different ethnic groups, as
well as a substantial FNMI minority who do not share a common identity, ideology or point of view.
6. Understand that the concept of acculturation includes four possible approaches to cultural change:
Annihilation
Segregation
Assimilation
Accommodation
7. Appreciate that any acculturation model has moral and ethical consequences attached to it.
*all learning outcomes have been taken from the foundational concepts in Unit 3 of the Social Studies 30:
Canadian Studies Curriculum Guide (1997)
Appreciate that contracts entered into by previous present circumstances when the language is written
generations remain morally binding until they have been in a different historical context? (p. 312 of Social
renegotiated between equal. Studies 30 1997 curriculum)
What is MY view of Canadian cultural identity?
Validation is an important result of interaction with a Learn to develop & apply criteria as a basis for coming
social group because it provides the individual with a to conclusions.
sense of acceptance, personal self-worth, purpose, and Practice Dialectical evaluation by defining
meaning.* viewpoints, testing viewpoints for factual accuracy, and
Marginalization is a form of rejection in which the morality, evaluating the factual and moral testing, and
individual is denied the opportunity to play a significant forming a conclusion about the issues.
role in the affairs of the group.* Practice developing and applying criteria as a basis for
According to the Canadian Charter of Rights & making value judgements.
Freedoms, everyone has the:* Use concepts to categorize and classify information.
freedom of conscience & religion Practice drawing generalizations and inferences from
freedom of thought, belief, opinion and classified data.
expression Learn to apply the moral test of: role exchange,
Freedom of peaceful assembly universal consequences, and new cases.
Freedom of association
Within modern societies there is a wide diversity of
ethnic backgrounds, ideologies, and points of view that
have to be conciliated.*
Canada is made up of FNMI people as well as
immigrants from different ethnic groups who do not
share a common identity, ideology, or worldview.*
Acculturation is the process of two or more cultures
adapting to each other so that people within the
respective cultures can interact with each other.*
Know that ethnocentrism is the false belief that ones
culture is superior to other cultures.
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
S Situation SITUATION: Students will be challenged to critically consider multiple cultural experiences
The context or challenge within Canadian society and to determine if all cultures in our Canadian mosaic are given
provided to the student. equal access to the privileges/rights.
P Product, Performance
What product/performance PRODUCT: Students will create a journal and will be assigned different topics to explore
will the student and discuss in their journal entries throughout the unit as their knowledge and
create? assessment of Canadian culture expands.
See attached rubrics for unit performance task and group research project and
presentation.
S Standards & Criteria for The mark students receive during this unit of study will be weighted as follows:
Success 5% My Canadian Identity Project
Create the rubric for the 10% Participation / homework completion
Performance Task 20% Collaborative Work Skills (Self-assessment will be worth 10% and group assessment
will be 10%)
25% group project
40% reflective journal project
Students will demonstrate their growth and achievement: Students will reflect on what they have learned
through group research, discussions, and throughout the unit through the reflective journaling
presentations to the class. project.
through a peer-assessment rubric created by the Students will do a self-assessment of their own
teacher & students that will address both group learning and contribution to the group research
member participation assignment.
through their individual journal entries that will
periodically be reviewed and commented on by the
teacher.
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
Students will bring their own varied experience, heritage, and understanding of Canadian cultural identity FNMI,
French, British, recent immigration, etc.
Students will be given the opportunity to choose which culture they research.
Students will take part in the pre-planning by co-creating the assessment criteria for both the group research projects
and the reflective journal assignment.
Students will be given various options throughout the unit regarding: how they express and present the initial
Canadian cultural identity project, how they choose to research their group project (online research, library,
interviews, primary sources), how they present their research to the class, and how they choose to complete their
reflective journal (online, visual journal, or traditional).
If feasible and students choose to, they may choose to present their research outside the classroom at a location
connected to their project (such as Wanuskewin, Ukrainian Cultural Museum, etc).
How will you engage students at the beginning of the unit? (motivational set)
We will begin this unit by reviewing Canadian identity in popular culture. Students will then spend time designing their own
creative expression of what they see as their Canadian identity. After the presentation of everyones projects, we will discuss
the varying ideas that have been presented and students will be guided towards the realization that different people have
different views of Canadian identity.
What events will help students experience and explore the enduring understandings and essential questions
in the unit? How will you equip them with needed skills and knowledge?
# Lesson Lesson Activities CCCs Resources
Title
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
A link to the video will be added to the Google Doc for students to reference.
13 meetings
Project outline, project timeline, lists of group members and assigned cultures,
as well as research questions and worksheets will all be added to the class
Google doc.
1. Class will open with a graphic from the internet that says I was here
first I will ask students what they think the implications of that
statement mean. We will look at the question of the day at this time
too. (5 min.)
2. PowerPoint of the timeline of the relationship between First Nations and
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
Links to the videos will be added to the Google Doc for students to reference.
Handout:
1 Day 16: Question of the day: DT Treaty Map of
6 Treaties How should contracts from the past be honoured in present circumstances DL Canada
Whats the when the language is written in a different historical context? DSR Handout:
big deal?! DI&I treaty research
Goals: 1) Appreciate that contracts entered into by previous generations worksheet
remain morally binding until they have been renegotiated between equals. Access to
netbooks,
Treaties Whats the big deal?! (60 minutes) library or
1. Handout & explanation of: Treaty Map of Canada & research computer lab
worksheet (5-7 (min.)
2. Students will be divided into groups of 3 or 4. Jigsaw: Each group will
be given a specific treaty to research and answer questions about
(25 min.)
3. Students will present their group research to the class and take
notes during other groups presentations (2 min. per group)
4. Class discussion and summary of what was promised in treaties.
(15-18 min.)
Guiding question:
Did both sides honour their agreement?
What would some of the challenges be for both sides during
treaty negotiation?
What were some of the things promised?
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
performance assessment and learning directly tied to the unit outcomes. The initial project on Canadian
experiences? Identity acts as an assessment of students point of view and prior
knowledge regarding the common myth of Canadian society as opposed
to the facts. This will help me identify any potential misconceptions that
may need to be addressed throughout the unit. This initial project will
also help students to see that not everyone has the same definition of
Canadian identity. Students next performance task involves group work
which can be a struggle at times for students, but also provides
important learning experiences regarding working with others which is
inevitably what society is about. The overall unit assessment piece is an
ongoing project that will require students to reflect on what they have
learned throughout the unit and will promote deeper understanding of
the unit content.
Instructional Approaches:
Do I use a variety of teacher directed and This unit contains a variety of direct instructional approaches including:
student centered instructional approaches? PowerPoint presentations and lecture
Watching videos & filling out worksheets that encourage deeper
thinking and assessment of the topics
Small & medium size group work
Student driven research
Students are given freedom to choose how they present or
express their learning
class discussion session which will provide formative assessment
Indirect instructional strategies used:
time for personal and group reflection
reflection through the reflective journal assignment
concept attainment through finding examples of various forms of
acculturation within Canadian history
Independent Instruction
research project
journaling
FNM/I Content and Perspectives/Gender Culturally diversity will be promoted as students may choose to
Equity/Multicultural Education: research their own families cultural history in Canada or they
Have I nurtured and promoted diversity while may choose to research a different culture that they are
honoring each childs identity? interested in learning more about.
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit
From: Wiggins, Grant and J. McTighe. (1998). Understanding by Design, Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development, ISBN # 0-87120-313-8 (pbk)
Social Studies 30: Culture Unit