Grade 6: Urbanization

In the 2011-2012 school year, I was introduced to an Action Research team out of the University of Regina that is looking at how to teach treaty education more effectively in the classroom. In particular, they are looking at digital storytelling. As I was teaching grade 6 Social Studies, I piggy-backed on their project for a few months. This page details my class’s participation with this project.

In grade 6 social studies, students are expect to achieve the following outcome:

DR 6.2d

Conduct an inquiry into the nature of urbanization and examine the impact of urbanization on youth, including indigenous youth, in Canada and in a selection of countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean.

Using this as my basis, I had the students watch the CBC documentary 8th Fire: Indigenous in the City. Then they were asked to complete the following assignment:

Urbanization and the First Nations Assignment

Your job is to investigate one aspect of urbanization and how it relates to the First Nations. You must present your findings to the class as a slideshow. In order to be considered for a mark of Excellent, you must use Prezi.

Each presentation should last a minimum of 5 minutes and contain a minimum of 20 slides. This allows for about 15 seconds per slide.

You must have the following elements in your presentation:

Reference to one newspaper article
Reference to the 8^th Fire episode: Indigenous in the City
At least 5 images
At least one song by a First Nations artist
At least one YouTube clip
Screen shot of your use of social media such as: Twitter, Facebook, a blog, My Space, etc.

Hand Outs:

Assignment sheet for students

Urbanization and the First Nation Assignment

A graphic organizer to help narrow down a topic

urbanization brainstorm

Step-by-step instructions on how to use LiveBinder

LiveBinder Assignment

Information sheet on Urbanization and Canada’s Aboriginal population

The Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study

My sample Power-Point presentation about reserves

Reserves

Some Final Projects