Educational Activities The Winnipeg School Division No. 1
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What is a Canadian?

Description:

"...What began as a quest has ended a quintessential Canadian affirmation of peace, freedom and love for this land we all call home..."

Essentially, this Internet based project was designed to define what it is to be a Canadian, a notion that has eluded many. Our grade 05 students, with this objective in mind, devised 5 survey questions which were posted on the web and e-mailed to grade 05 classrooms across the nation.

SocialStudies: Yes

TypeLessonPlan: UnitPlan - complete unit

TechnologySkills: E-mail, collecting data, web authoring

SoftwareUsed: Internet, AOL Press, Microsoft Works

EarlyYears:

MiddleYears: Yes

S1-S4:

SpecificGrade: 5, S1

Submittedby: Steve Skultety, Kevin Mowat

Email: sskultety@wsd1.org, kmowat@wsd1.org

Details:

The questions were:

1. Do you think Canada is a great place to live? Why? What do you like most about being a Canadian? Why? What do you think is special about Canada? Why? What is most important to the people in your province? Why? Who is your favourite Canadian hero? Why?
2. After the responses were sufficient to see trends and draw conclusions the students analyzed/synthesized the raw data using the cooperative learning structure the jigsaw. Graphs were developed and summaries were written in preparation for the final report that would be posted. (if replicated we recommend constructing databases to enhance analysis/synthesis of data)
3. Because this was a truly collaborative project (among students) and only one report would be written for the web, we felt it necessary to give all students the experience of web authoring using the WYSIWYG editor AOL Press. Each student therefore had an opportunity to create a virtual brochure of the Canadian province that they were researching while waiting for the Internet responses.

Coda:  Every few days, we would report the number of hits or responses to the students. Following the project was like watching a plant grow. We planted a "seed" and watched it grow. (Skultety, 1997)

The project can be found at: http://hal9000.wsd1.winnipeg.mb.ca/nnl/cecil_r/cecil.stm

Filename: What is a Canadian.htm