Artifact 6

Educators have a broad knowledge base and understand the subjects they teach.

B.C. Standard # 6

Educators understand the curricular, conceptual and methodological foundations of education and of the subject areas they teach. Educators must be able to communicate effectively in English or French. Educators teach students to understand relevant curricula in a Canadian, Aboriginal, and global context. Educators convey the values, beliefs and knowledge of our democratic society.

Part of a teacher's job is to educate students to be active citizens of Canadian society. Perhaps this is a slightly overused phrase when it comes to teacher's responsibilities, but it is true. It is our job to prepare our students for their life in the future, and part of that is being a critical thinking Canadian citizen. So, how do you teach a primary aged student to be a critical thinking member of Canadian society? They probably wouldn't even understand the majority of the words in that sentence. I decided to take out all the mumbo jumbo and make it relevant to them. 

In my social studies Canada unit I devoted one of our classes to learning about the government. Again this seems like a big subject for a young child, but the key is you need to bring it to them at their level. I started off our class discussion by talking about the capital of Canada. I than asked the students if anybody knew what was in Ottawa. The answer came back: government. Bingo! We than had a discussion about the things that the government does for us. Some of the ideas that we came up with were: keep us safe, make laws, look after our money (sadly they don't give us money, like some of my students thought), they help us with our education,  and they keep us healthy. A pretty good list for grade 3! At this point I showed them a child friendly version of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We went through and discussed the list. I explained that in many places kids don't have the rights that they have here. There were many gasps and 'really's at this point of the lesson. Next I had the students work in partners and pick the three most important rights to them, and they had to agree. The students than shared out what they chose and why. Then came the tough part. The students than had to pick their number one most important right from the three they had chosen and write an explanation about why they picked it. The explanations were great, and they had some interesting reasons about why it was the most important to them. Critical thinking: check!

You might think that this is a little bit much for these kids, but you know what they got it! Many of them came up to me afterwards and said, "I am glad I live in Canada" or "We have a nice government". Perhaps their opinions will become more polarized down the road when they become teenagers, but for now they know a lot more about our government than I did at their age. It seems that many educators skip over this type of content because it seems too advanced, but the reality is if you bring it to their level they will get it. This is a big step for them in understanding who we are as Canadians, and what it means to be a Canadian citizen. And yes I do agree with my students, we live in a pretty awesome country! Things might not be perfect, but we have it pretty good.