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Culminating Activity: History Close to Home
To the Students | To the Teacher | Selected Resources | Download Activity PDF
To the Teacher
TEACHER TIPS
- Using local historic places, people, and events in your history
program can enrich the teaching and learning of history and help you
integrate a number of disciplines. As students investigate these places,
people, and events, and interpret their historical and cultural significance,
abstract concepts and broad issues become tangible. Working with members
of the community, students can appreciate local history and culture
and make connections between their local community and our country's
history.
- This project can be completed over an extended period of time as
students explore other significant places, people, and events in Canadian
history. Help them understand why a piece of local history can be
of national significance.
- For the purposes of this activity, define the meaning of the term
"community." Depending on your location, it can mean a neighbourhood,
town, city, region, county, or province/territory.
- Before the students start this activity, review what they need to
know to conduct the research successfully, e.g., conducting an interview,
accessing and interpreting primary source documents, use of library
catalogues, acceptable Internet use.
- Show the video Places in
Time to give the students some ideas about the kinds of places,
people, and events that have already been designated.
- Once the virtual field trip is completed, students can send letters
to representatives from the municipal, provincial/territorial, and
federal governments, the press, parents and community members, and
local heritage organizations, inviting them to visit the Web site
they created.
ASSESSMENT
- Review the rubric with the
students before they start the activity and ensure they understand
the criteria for success. The rubric can be used for self-, peer,
and/or teacher assessment.
- You will find a summary of
the correlation with the curriculum for your province or territory.
A more detailed explanation of the links between each activity and
each provincial/territorial curriculum is found in the Curriculum
Correlations section.
RELATED ACTIVITIES
- For Part D, students in the higher grades might present their proposal
to a "Historic Sites and Monuments Board" comprised of their
classmates. This "Board" would review the students'
research and ask the following questions:
- How does this place, person, or event connect to the local community
and to the history of other places in Canada?
- How would we explain our local place, person, or event to Canadians
from another community, especially a distant one with a different
language and culture?
Based on the answers to the above questions, the "Board"
decides whether the chosen place, person, or event is of local, regional,
or national significance.
- Students could write a 200-word text to accompany their suggested
commemoration that captures why this place, person, or event is significant.
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