3 Tips for Teaching Ontario Grade 3/4 Social Studies (Strand B) Easily

I've spent most of my career as an Ontario teacher in split-grade classrooms, and I'm always looking for strategies and activities to make teaching two curriculums easier.   It doesn't have to be a messy, time-consuming process....at least for social studies!

Grade 3/4 Strand B:  People and Environments

Strand B is generally the "geography and government" strand.  The main focus is on how humans and the environment affect one another, and what role government plays in maintaining a balance between the two.

This strand includes the following units for each grade:

• Grade 3:  Living and Working in Ontario
• Grade 4:  Political and Physical Regions of Canada

I looked at the big ideas from the curriculum for each grade and then combined them to make blended big ideas that work well overall.  

1. The natural features of an environment affect how land is used and the jobs that people have.
2. People must make careful decisions that are good for nature and for humans.
3. Human activities and the environment in each specific region affect each other.

3 Tips for Making Strand B Work in Your Grade 3/4 Classroom:

1. Consider starting your unit with a local perspective:  what is unique about your local environment?  What environmental advantages did the area have that motivated people to first settle there?  How have people affected the environment, most positively and negatively?
2. Focus on physical regions as Grade 3s will look at the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canadian Shield, and Great Lakes - St. Lawrence Lowlands, and the Grade 4s can extend the learning to the other four regions of Canada.
3. Do you know anyone in your community that has a job that is very uniquely related to the environment (a logger, for example)?  Consider inviting them to your classroom to explain the relationship between his/her career and the particular environment that made that job possible.  You could also invite a local government representative (town councillor, MP or MPP) to speak about how they support local environmental issues and promote jobs in their riding.

Can I find a ready-made resource to help me teach Strand B in my Grade 3/4 class?

Yes, of course you can!  I have put together a blended unit, Exploring Ontario and Canada that allows you to teach one lesson to both grades - no running back and forth between grades.  You can check it out here:  

I also have a digital version and a French version of this unit (a digital French resource is in the hands of my translator at the moment)! 

3 Tips for Using Word Walls in Elementary Social Studies

I am a huge fan of word walls in any subject, and have happily created walls for each math unit, science strand, and novel study I undertook.  Social studies is my particular love, though, and I find that students can struggle without concrete strategies being provided to help them master the content vocabulary.  A word wall is a quick and easy tool to make students comfortable with the new words and terms they encounter.  

Here are 3 tips to help make the most of any word wall in Grades 4-7.

1.  Display Strategies

a)  Word/Phrase + Definition + Image = Comprehension

Students do best when they can see an image related to a word or phrase has a short definition.

b)  Arrange by topic.  In the image here, you can see that an upcoming  municipal election is being studied by the class, and images of the candidates are displayed, as well as election terminology.

c)  Consider individual word walls for some students.  Students who struggle to maintain concentration when using a word wall on a bulletin board may do better with some key vocabulary gathered on a ring or in a folder.

2.  Play Games!

A word wall should never be a stagnant display, but a living tool in your classroom.  When you have a few extra minutes before it's time to go home, play one of the following games using the word wall.

a)  Hangman:  the traditional game, but students know ahead of time that each word is one that is already displayed in the room.

b)  5 Clues:  Choose a word card ahead of time, and create five clues that students can use to figure out what word card you have chosen. Read one clue at a time, and have students use each clue to determine what card you've chosen.  They win if they can guess the card before you have given all the clues.  For example, for the word "foothill", for example, the clues could be:

1.  It is one word.

2.  It is a compound word.

3.  It can be found in the environment.

4.  It is a land feature.

5.  It has two sets of double letters.

c)  Bingo with Clues:  Distribute blank 5 x 5 (or 4 x 4 or 3 x 3) bingo cards to your students.  Have them fill in each box with a word or phrase from the word wall.  Without calling out the actual word wall words themselves, give them a clue.  For example, for "elder", you could say "this is a word that describes a wise person in the community".  

Political and Physical Regions of Canada Word Wall
(image courtesy of Sidney McKay)

3.  Have Students Choose Some Words

Sometimes we assume students understand some vocabulary that seems very basic to us, and then find out we were wrong.  Having some blank word wall words available for those moments will allow you to grab that "teachable moment" and have a willing student create the word wall card for such vocabulary.  Having word wall words made by students makes the wall more meaningful and useful to them!

Click on the image here to get your FREE Canadian Government Word Wall Sampler!

Check out my line of Ontario Social Studies Curriculum word wall resources here.

 

 

Free Virtual Class Field Trips....for When You Can't Actually Visit in Person

 

I'm writing this blog post in Spring 2021, when my home province of Ontario is in lockdown, and schools are once again virtual.  Like many school districts across the world, planning a real field trip involving school buses and permission slips is not possible this year, so teachers are looking for alternatives.  

A virtual field trip is one that is done via technology; it allows anyone to visit a location that may be all the way across the world, from the comfort of their chair.  While many virtual field trips have a cost, there are tons of free possibilities out there!

Upper elementary or middle school teachers can check out these free tours to see if one or more of them can fit in with their curriculums or simply make an engaging way of spending time in those last few days of school.

Canada's Parliament Buildings

When I was in elementary school, another nearby school sent its Grade 8 classes to Ottawa for a week to visit Canada's capital while MY principal declared he wasn't a travel agent.  While those other classes were visiting the Parliament Buildings, I was visiting the class of Sister Marie Theresa's friend's class in Tilbury, another small town.  We visited local industries, ate lunch at the Blue Bonnet Cafe, and attended mass.  Two weeks later, their class came to Wallaceburg to visit our town.   I may still be holding a (massive) grudge about the whole episode.

So, I never did get to see those Parliament Buildings, but you and your class can, courtesy of the internet.  Make your way through:

a) the Peace Tower Observation Deck.

b) the Memorial Centre.

c) the House of Commons.

d) the Prime Minister's Office.

e) the Library of Parliament.

f)  a meeting room.

Iqaluit:  Explore the Canadian Arctic

This site is in development, but it allows your students to discover a bit about what it would be like to live in an arctic community, which can only be accessed by plane or boat!

The Emerald Edge Rainforest 

Visit the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world, which your students may be surprised to learn stretches across Canada's west coast into Alaska in the north and back to the United States (Washington).  The rainforest is home to more than 50 Indigenous communities and a vast array of wildlife.

Soarin' - Walt Disney World

If you have a few minutes to kill, take your class to my very favourite ride at my favourite place in the world!  They will fly over the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower, to name a few.   While we can't visit Disney right now, we CAN go virtually soaring!

Eiffel Tower

My friend Michelle McDonald has put together a free virtual trip to the Eiffel Tower in France!  It includes informational text, questions, and a grading rubric to go along with a video.  This has been created in Google Slides, and requires no paper!

San Diego Zoo Animal Cams 

The San Diego Zoo has webcams set up 24/7 on thirteen different animals, including elephants, koalas and penguins.  Your students might enjoy popping in on some of these animals to see what life is like for them.  You might want to tie this in with the great book Should There Be Zoos? by Tony Stead, found in almost every school library!

Quebec

This is another virtual tour created in Google Slides (created by me!).  Students learn about the Quebec Winter Carnival, visit the Indigenous community of Inukjuak, and become acquainted with some unique facts about this province.
  

If you would your students to explore all thirteen provinces and territories of Canada, check the full resource by clicking here or on the image below.

Ontario Grade 4/5 Blended Social Studies: Strand B

Teaching a split grade always has its challenges, but it can be done less painfully than some people think!  Let's take a look at the 2018 Ontario Social Studies Curriculum Strand B foci for Grades 4 and 5!  

Strand B is the People and Environments strand.  This strand asks students to explore the "geographic, social, political, economic, and environmental issues in the context of local, regional, national and global communities" with a goal to "develop an understanding of the social and environmental responsibilities of citizens and of various levels of government."

The two separate units are:

Grade 4:  Political and Physical Regions of Canada

Grade 5:  The Role of Government and Responsible Citizenship

What are the big ideas?

By looking at the Strand B "big ideas" for each grade, we can find commonalities to create blended big ideas.  Check out this chart:

By focusing on these big ideas, teachers can help  students:

• explore environmental issues that affect Canadian regions and provinces.
• look at how governments, groups, and citizens respond to these issues

Taking this approach allowed me to create a unit where both grades looked at:

• a variety of environmental issues in Canada's regions, provinces and territories.
• how humans actions (by individuals, industries and governments) affect the environment.
• how the environment affects humans, organizations and governments. 
• different perspectives on the issue.
• how Indigenous groups have been affected by these issues.
• future governmental actions that may address these issues in a positive manner.

Each student examines an environmental issue from one province or territory (I provide three issues per territory). and as a culminating activity creates a poster, scrapbook, report, brochure or cube detailing what they have learned.  Students include images and recommendations for the future.  

By using the big ideas in the curriculum in this way, it becomes easy to see how alike the two grade level expectations are, and to create a plan that allows both grades to look at the same issues with slightly different foci:

Grade 4:  What ARE the issues, and how have the environment and humans interacted with each other?

Grade 5:  How have levels of government affected these issues either positively or negatively, and what can be done in the future?

If this sounds like a direction you can see you and your students embracing, check out my Strand B unit.  (Good news:  I created both printable and digital versions, which can be purchased separately or as a bundle!) 

This printable version has complete lesson plans and examples of completed student work!

The digital version contains the same student texts and tasks in full colour with movable pieces and interactive texts, perfect for distance learning or meeting IEP accommodations.

The best of both worlds is the bundle, which makes it possible to have some students working with printable materials while others cover the same texts and tasks in digital form:

Teaching Canadian Government in Elementary School

 

Looking for some new ideas to teach Canadian government in your Grade 4-6 social studies class?  Believe it or not, it can be engaging for both you and your students!  

Check out these 3 ideas for bringing Canadian government alive in your classroom!

Newspaper Article Sort 

Find newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and any other current print resources that have information relevant to any level of government.  (If it's an election year, you will have more than enough material delivered by the candidates and their campaign teams right to your door!)  Check with your local newspaper, and see if they would be willing to donate (or sell at a steep discount) copies of their papers for your government unit.

After spending some time teaching about the 3 levels of government and their responsibilities, explain that all forms of media spend much of their time investigating and reporting upon issues that are important to all Canadians, all people in a province or territory, and/or citizens of a municipality.  Create a chart with three columns:  Federal/Provincial (or Territorial)/Municipal.

Distribute the print resources you have to students, and ask them to cut out and sort any articles in which a level of government might be involved. Once completed, take one level and discuss the various issues students found that might be handled by that government. Repeat with the other two levels of government. If you wanted to take the learning further, you could proceed with the next strategy, which is.....Community Mapping.

Community Mapping

The Ontario Social Studies Curriculum for Grade 5, Strand B states that students "will develop plans of action to address significant social and environmental issues".  The easiest way to approach this is by having your students IDENTIFY social and environmental issues within their immediate community, whether that be the school catchment area, the small town they live in, or the rural area that surrounds the school.

Here is a short summary of what I have done in my own class:

1. Community Features: Class makes a chart of buildings, features and services that people might expect when moving to a new community.
2. Community Walk:Class takes a walk through the community, looking for the buildings services, and features from their chart, as well as identifying issues in the community.
3. Community Mapping:  Students return to class.  Each student or pair of students creates a "bird-eye" view map of the community.  
4. Community Issues:  Students discuss and chart the community features they noticed, using their maps as a reference tool.  They then create a 2nd "Issues" chart, noting where the community could benefit from some improvements.
5. Choosing Community Action Focus:  Have students form groups.  Each group chooses ONE "issue" from the community for which they will create an action plan to address. For example, in the "Issues" chart below, one group might decide to take on the lack of a municipal pool, and create their plan to approach the municipal country to address the lack of a splash pad or pool.
6. Community Action Plan:  Students make a plan for doing further research, contacting local officials, planning a publicity session.....the options are endless!

Chat Stations

If you're looking for a quick introduction to Canadian government, try introducing some "chat stations" into your classroom.  Collect anywhere between 6 and 12 government-related issues or images, and post each in different spot in your classroom, along with a prompt or question for students to consider as they rotate in small groups from station to station.  (You may want each group to record their thoughts on a clipboard as they rotate through the stations.)  After everyone has had a chance to visit each station, bring them back together to discuss each station.  

I hope at least one of these ideas inspires you to try something new with your class this year!  If you're looking for more ideas and activities to support you in teaching Canadian government, consider these resources from my Coach's Corner TPT store: