To celebrate Canada 150, classes from Wikwemikong High School, Simcoe County DSB and other schools will collaborate and craft their vision of what being a great Canadian looks like. Indigenous perspectives will be infused throughout.
During the building stage, students will have the option of building in the collaborative Minecraft world while others may choose to craft other things to share their vision (artistic representations, dioramas, media, etc.).
Teachers will be supported in attending Google Hangouts on Air with their classes and using VLE (D2L) discussion forums to support collaboration with other classes. We are here to help! This is a perfect way to get started in using technology with a strong purpose in a supportive community.
As an interdisciplinary project, students work together in smaller cross-class working groups.
This collaboration is designed for grades 7 - 12. Teachers of grade 1 - 6 classes should consider participating in A Kids Guide to Canada.
Here's how this will work:
Teachers and students will introduce themselves by creating media (short videos or images) and posting them in a D2L discussion. Students will then discuss and decide "What is Your Canada" (please see the doc below for more info). Then we will look at stereotypes in Canada. Throughout this students will be responding to discussion prompts in the D2L discussion groups and creating small pieces of media. We will have a series of Google Hangouts where students share ideas and hear from each other.
Then we will move into the Knowledge Building phase. Here students will work in small groups with students from different schools. They work on creating a mind map together and will hopefully chat and share ideas together. To form the groups, students suggest inquiry questions within the theme "What does it look like to be a great Canadian?". Students will need to go in and work for a few periods as they research their inquiry question.
Then, we will all move into the Crafting phase. Students will take their new learning from their Knowledge Building groups and decide what they will "craft" (hopefully together) to represent their vision of what being a great Canadian looks like today. They can build in Minecraft , or craft something else (art, music, video, models, etc.).
Lastly, students will reflect on their craft and explain to the whole group how it represents their vision of what being a great Canadian looks like. This reflection will be important.
NOTE: This collaborative project works best when you make it part OF your course instead of trying to "add it on" to things you normally do. Make Canadian identity, or Canada150 or Indigenous perspectives or TRC the theme for much of your course and read articles together, discuss relevant topics. Assess skills from your course based around this theme. This will allow this project to blend right into your course seamlessly and give you many assessment opportunities (conversations, observations and products).
Resources: