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)! 

Teaching a 3/4 Split Social Studies Class in Ontario? You Need to Read this Blog Post!

 Teaching a Grade 3/4 split in Ontario can be extra challenging, simply because it is also a division split.  That said, it is actually my favourite split grade (well, except perhaps for the whole EQAO thing).  Since social studies is my favourite subject, I thought it was time to talk about how to approach Strand A:  Heritage and Identity. 

In Ontario the Strand A units are:

• Grade 3:  Communities in Canada, 1780-1850
• Grade 4:  Early Societies to 1500

Students from both grades are being asked to explore life in early communities, albeit from different time periods.  By looking at the big ideas of the social studies curriculum, it quickly becomes clear that there are very similar concepts being explored in both grades.

I took the 3 big ideas of each grade and merged them into three blended big ideas that can serve as overall foci for this unit.  By keeping these ideas in mind at all times, it becomes easier to develop a seamless unit.

When planning my unit, I kept referring back to these ideas:

1. Studying how communities in the past developed helps us understand aspects of our lives today.
2. The environment affected how people worked, played, and lived in early societies.
3. The lives of Indigenous peoples and settlers in early societies were different in many ways.

Why was the Social Studies Curriculum revised in 2018?

• In 2018 the curriculum was revised to meet the recommendations of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation on residential schools.  Not every grade or strand was affected by the changes.  Grades 4-8, as well as 10, were the focus of the revised curriculum.  This means that Grade 3 had no changes, but Grade 4 did!
• Both grades are expected to explore Indigenous Canadian communities:
• Grade 3:  First Nations and Metis (Metis did not exist before 1780.)
• Grade 4:  First Nations and Inuit (Inuit people have lived in North America prior to 1500.)
• Looking at the time periods for each grade, you'll see that Grade 3s are looking at 1780-1850  (post- European contact), well after the Grade 4 period which looks at life before 1500 (pre-European contact).  The gap between these time periods is not looked at until Grade 5!

What other communities can be explored?

Grade 3 students are focused solely on Canada but can explore the lives of European settlers, black communities, and other smaller groups.

Grade 4 students can expand their studies to look at Ancient Greece, Medieval England, Mesopotamia, and many other historical societies.  

Both grades can look at these communities while keeping in mind the blended big ideas of the strand, making life easier for both teacher and students!  

So How Can I Teach these Units at the Same Time?

• Mapping can be a great starting point for any social studies unit.  I have students look at a variety of maps, globes, and atlases to discuss their distinct features.  Then we move on to locating some of the societies we will be exploring.  In this particular unit, students look at why and how Europeans came to North America, and what life was like for people before and after this contact.
• Using a large timeline on classroom walls is a great way to chart when societies developed over time.  All the communities studied by both grades can be noted on this timeline.
• Teach lessons focused upon the big ideas, and then give each grade separate texts or resources to apply those big ideas to the communities they are studying.  For example, in exploring how the environment affected the types of shelters older societies used, Grade 3s can look at how the Inuit people created shelters in the frozen North, while the Grade 4s look at medieval homes in England.  
• At the end of each lesson, return students' attention to the big ideas.  How did the lesson help them understand that big idea a bit better?
• Use similar tasks, so that the two grades aren't doing something completely different.  For example, in the "Exit Ticket" below, both grades are describing food used by the communities studied.  Grade 3s look at First Nations, Metis, and European settler cuisine, while Grade 4s look at First Nations, Inuit, and Medieval English foods. Just cut the sheet apart to give to your Grade 3s and 4s!

Can I find a ready-made unit to help me teach Strand A in my Grade 3/4 split?

Yes, of course you can!  I've done all the work for you.  This Life in Early Communities unit contains 18 complete lesson plans, with all student texts, tasks, and assessments ready to go.  

Do you have a digital version of this unit?

Again, yes I do!  This version contains movable pieces, editable texts, and clickable links, while also including the same content as the original printable version!  Check it out here!

But I teach French Immersion - do you have this unit translated?

French Immersion teachers, I haven't forgotten about you!  I have both printable and digital versions of my Strand A unit.  Click here to see the "printable + digital" bundle!

If you have any questions about teaching this strand, whether or not it's specific to my own TPT resource, please feel free to email me at:

coachsteachingcorner@gmail.com!

Have a great week!

Margie

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:

Ontario Grade 5/6 Science: Life Systems Culminating Projects

When planning any unit I love to use "backwards design", meaning that I go through the following process:

1.  Determine the big ideas I want students to understand by the end of the unit.
2.  Design a culminating task that allows students to demonstrate their understanding of those big ideas.
3.  Planning lessons that allow students to explore those big ideas, so that they will meet with success upon reaching the culminating task.

Step 1:  Determine the Big Ideas

When dealing with a split grade (which I almost always am!), those big ideas are even more important!  I don't want to be running two completely separate programs.  When I approached the Understanding Life Systems strand for my Grade 5/6 class, I considered the big ideas for both strands:
Grade 5:  Human Organ Systems
Grade 6:  Biodiversity

Basically, I wanted students to understand that parts of a life system work together to keep the whole system healthy, and that human actions can affect these systems, both positively and negatively.  

Step 2:  Create a Culminating Task

After determining that I wanted students to demonstrate their understanding of how life systems worked, I decided that they could show their learning by creating a complete system.  Grade 5s would create human body systems, and Grade 6s would create ecosystems.  With 25 students (9 Grade 5s and 16 Grade 6s), I assigned each student a system. (Due to the particular needs of my small Grade 5 group, I decided to assign only five types of human body stems, knowing that we would be visiting other systems in our health classes.)

Here are the systems I chose:  

Students would need to:

1.  Use a variety of materials to create a three-dimensional complete system.
2.  Identify the different parts of the system.  Grade 5s labeled each part and included a glossary, while Grade 6s identified features such as the different types of producers and consumers in their systems.
3.  Display their finished systems and explain them to the Grade 2/3 and Grade 4/5 classes in our school, and answer any questions that may arise.

Step 3:  Plan Enabling Lessons

Once I knew what I wanted my students to be able to demonstrate at the end of our unit, I set about planning a series of lessons that would help students meet with success.  We explored:

• Parts of a System (we initially looked at items such as bicycles and pulley systems)
• Classifications (looking at how parts of a system may be sorted by their function)
• Food Chains
• Trophic Pyramids
• Interdependence
• Human Actions - both positive and negative (We looked at the issue of microbeads, exploring how these beads could affect both human body systems and ecosytems.)

The science centres from Teaching is a Gift were crucial for my students in exploring the big ideas of this unit, and their `hands-on`nature meant my students were always engaged.

Step 4:  The Projects!!!

I allowed my students plenty of time to work on their final projects in class, but also let them work on them at home as well.  I made it clear that they would be assessed on their learning, not on the actual physical object itself.  As students knew their assignments from the very beginning of the unit, they had ample time to gather any materials they wanted to use, and they were very enthusiastic about putting together projects that would show what they had been exploring in class.  We invited students from other classes to come in to see the projects and to ask students "hard questions" (a task the younger students took very seriously).  I walked about the room during these periods, listening in to my students' explanations, and asking my own probing questions.  I waited for a peaceful period after school to examine both the projects and my anecdotal notes to arrive at a final assessment for this project, and shared my thoughts with students on a one-on-one basis over the next few days.  

Teaching in a split-grade classroom can be challenging, but I find that staying focused on the big ideas always helps keep me and my students on the right track with the curriculum!

Making Connections in the Ontario Grade 4/5 Split Grade Social Studies Class

It's that time of year again when split-grade teachers face the challenge of organizing their social studies programs in a way that doesn't overwhelm either themselves or their students.  I've written about how Grade 5/6 social studies can be approached, and today I'm hoping to help Grade 4/5 teachers look at Strand A
of the Ontario Social Studies with a positive outlook!  
A quick reminder:  the two units are:

• Grade 4:  Early Societies, 3000 BCE - 1500 CE
• Grade 5:  First Nations and Europeans in New France and Early Canada

Looking at the Big Ideas in Strand A

The Heritage and Identity strand of the Ontario Social Studies Curriculum asks students to explore a variety of communities, focusing upon:

a)  connections between the past and the present
b)  interactions within and between different communities

Looking at the "big ideas" of the curriculum can help teachers focus on the most important concepts we want students to think about, even long after the actual unit is finished.  I've spent some time thinking about the big ideas for Strand A, and organized them in this chart:

Looking at the big ideas this way makes planning just a bit easier!  Basically, I want students to:

a)  understand that we learn from historical ideas and viewpoints that help us make better sense of things occurring in the world around them
b)  early societies were created through the conflict and cooperation between groups of people, and between people and their environments

I am not worried that my students will remember the exact date that Samuel de Champlain arrived in North America for the first time.  Instead, I want them to explore and think about WHY Champlain wanted to create a settlement there HOW he and other Europeans treated the First Nations groups already living there, and WHAT conflicts and instances of cooperation occurred as early Canada developed.  While that particular group is more the focus for Grade 5s, the Grade 4s can also explore the same concepts with the Early Aztecs in Mexico, or with the feudal society in Medieval England.

These big ideas also invite students to contemplate and explore the overarching question in a Grade 4/5 class:  How Do Societies Survive and Grow?

Looking carefully at the "Big Ideas" and "Concepts of Social Studies Thinking" at the front of the Ontario Social Studies Curriculum always helps me clarify what my students should really be thinking about, and saves me from panicking at dealing with two sets of expectations at the same time.

By looking at the curriculum in this way, I can create a unit that let me teach one lesson to both grades, without having to run back and forth between the two groups. After a frontloading lesson about how environmental features affect where societies or cultures establish themselves, the Grade 4s can look at the way the Aztecs of Mexico and the Inuit of Canada were influenced by the land around them, while the Grade 5s can do the same with various Indigenous groups and early European settlers.  

In fact, I create two units for my Coach's Corner TPT store, one in PDF format while the other one contains the same lessons and tasks only in digital form using Google Slides.  You can check them out by clicking the links below!

How do YOU approach dealing with social studies in your split-grade classroom?  I'd love to hear from you!

Margie

A Look at Split Grade 5/6 Social Studies Strand B: People & Environments

I've been hearing from many teachers lately concerned about how to keep their sanity while trying to handle the 2018 Ontario Social Studies Curriculum in a split grade, and as I have rarely taught a straight grade, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the topic.

                    Grade 5/6:  People and Environments

The Grade 5/6 split is one that can be particularly troubling for teachers, as at first glance the units can seem so unrelated, but I think if we take a closer look, the expectations are actually quite similar.  Today I'm going to explore the People and Environments strand:

• Grade 5:  The Role of Government and Responsible Citizenship
• Grade 6:  Canada's Interactions with the Global Economy

Basically the Grade 5 unit has students look at current social & environment issues within the country from various perspectives, examining and evaluating the actions taken by various levels of government to address these issues, and explore their own responsibilities as citizens as they create action plans to address these issues.

The Grade 6 unit has students explore current social, political, economic, and environmental issues withing the global community, examining and evaluating the actions taken by Canadian federal, provincial/territorial & local governments as well as NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) to address these issues and explore Canada's participation in different international accords, organizations, and programs.

Can you see the commonalities here? 

• The Grade 5's are basically looking at social & environmental issues within our country, seeing how various levels of government handle these issues, and then go on to explore how they themselves can influence how decisions are made through their own activism.
• The Grade 6's are also looking at social & environmental issues (and adding on political & economic issues), but this time within the entire world, and seeing how Canadian governments, governments from other countries, and NGOs handle these issues.  Instead of creating their own action plans, they go on to explore Canada's international presence within various organizations.

In a Grade 5/6 split I see the potential here to perhaps keep the focus on social and environmental issues, such as child poverty or the protection & availability of clean water within Canada as well as within the world.

Coach's Corner Split Grade Strand B Blended Unit:

Using the ideas from above, I created a split grade "blended" unit to use with my Grade 5/6 class.  I call it a blended unit because I have blended the "big ideas" from both grades to create lessons that can be taught to both grades at once.  Each grade may have different texts or slightly different tasks to explore the lesson's themes, before participating in knowledge building circles to share the connections between their learning.  Check it out here: