General Information

  Project Overview

The Grade 6 Social Studies uses as its main curriculum resource the text book, Our Country Canada. This text is outdated and often times the students’ questions regarding current governing elected officials, population size, tourist attractions and natural resources can not be readily answered. This project would alleviate this problem by enabling them to access government websites and retrieve current and relevant information.

  Curriculum Connections

Main curriculum areas:

• Social Studies
• Language Arts
• Technology

Curriculum plans for school:

• Integration of several subject areas.
• Student directed learning.
• Integration of technology into the curriculum.

Following General Learning Outcomes and Intended Learning outcomes for subject areas.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

Social Studies:

Students will:

• Examine the organization of formal groups (government) and how they contribute to the community.
• Examine how economic resources influence development of communities.
• Examine how formal groups respond to the needs of the people.
• Analyze the factors that influence the size of communities.
• Develop a vocabulary of words that describe and explain the levels of government.

Language Arts:

Students will:

• Use the writing process to produce documents based on the information retrieved through the Internet.
• Present orally and in writing, information they have acquired through this project.
• Through e-mail make written requests to government agencies for specific information.

Technology Education:

Students will:

• Demonstrate knowledge of receiving/retrieving information.
• Identify ways in which information and communications technologies are used.
• Develop a vocabulary of terminology and language related to the selected communications technologies.
• Use communications tools to access, evaluate and select appropriate information.

  Resource Connections

Through a recent CAP proposal, L. R. Ash Elementary will be connected to the Internet. The funding for this proposal will enable us to provide internet access to the 24 computers in our computer lab. However, once the funding from CAP runs out, we would benefit greatly from being a Stellar School. Our school’s enrollment from Kindergarten to Grade Six is less than 150, and shrinking every year. To provide the money for internet access beyond the end of the CAP project, would be extremely difficult without the Stellar School support.

It is our hope to provide satellite feed for our school through fundraising efforts over the next few years.

  Evaluation

Our students will link to government websites for the ten provinces and two territories and access information that is relevant to their Social Studies curriculum.

• Students will become acquainted with and use e-mail to make requests for information to appropriate government agencies.
• Students will develop and present orally and through their portfolios "My Country Canada", information on the provinces and territories of Canada.
• Students will link to other sites through the internet that may provide additional information.
• Students will analyze how people interact with their physical environment to create their social environment.

Our country, Canada is a vast nation. Through the internet and the students’ experiences with it, we hope to make the study of Canada a little less daunting as each student pursues their own personal quest for knowledge of their country.