What a great day to be a Social Studies teacher! I had two SS10 classes in the library today taking a 2nd, deeper look at what they could find online to support their ongoing heritage projects. Some sat at tables sharing what they had brought in, others were plugged in surfing for maps, photos, and family trees. Holy cow, they were finding amazing connections and very eager to talk about it. I'll share the stories of four girls to illustrate. The boys were too quiet today, I guess.
Courtney produced a box of family history material that contained albums, journals, genealogies, reunion scrapbooks, and loose photos. She said it would be overwhelming to go through it all to figure out what kind of story she was going to tell to make sense of it... but she had a huge grin and obviously relished the task. She had done some of this kind of work in SS9 and figured out her French Canadian roots went back to the banks of the St. Lawrence and the Company of 100 Associates in the 1660s. This year she is taking on the German side of her family.
Bethany produced a family chart and family history book and began writing out a clean copy of her family tree. I looked at some of the names and dates and one set caught my eye. She had Irish great-x?-grandparents who came off the boat in the 1840s and made their way to "Concession 10, Lot 19" in South Plantagenet, Prescott township of Upper Canada. The family history book told some of their story, clearing land and building a cabin, the birth of children and hardships endured, and included a map of the land grants. I found the place on Google Earth (see the picture above, the land on either side of South Nation River, a tributary to the Ottawa) and it still retains some of the features that must have been original improvements in the early 19th century. There is also some extraction of ? going on, complete with drainage ponds - a chance to ask questions about what's going on now. What made it extra neat is that the immigration story, land grant, map, story, and location were pretty much an exact match for the "New Home" simulation we did in class a few weeks ago. She laughed when she realized how her fictitious story about the role-play was so similar to what her ancestors went through; she got that "genealogist's chill" when one connects something real and fascinating to one's identity and personal/historical timeline.
Melanie had some books and an enormous family tree/chart that included a picture curious little run-down house. It seems one of her relatives lived there for a time. According to the caption, the shingles concealed a log cabin underneath that was part of the original 1876 Hudson Bay Company post in Calgary, and as such is the oldest building in the city. We found it on Google Street view and were able to piece together that its identity was recently (re)discovered and there are restoration plans underway. Needless to say, she is dialed in now, to the course and to her past, and wants to know more about who put together the information and how the house is connected to her history.
Kaitlin has been gathering copies of records and photos from relatives over the last few weeks. She has looking at towns in Luxembourg, French, Irish family photos, lots of maps, and an interesting pile of records, and a collection of WWII-era documents, including a Kennkarte although we're not sure how this is connected to her family. One of the issues students encounter when doing online research is the volume of material that comes up when they search their roots -- sometimes it is connected, sometimes it is not. She also told me she was "wearing her heritage" -- her black leather shoes and white, wide-collared shirt were her great-grandfather's, both a size too big but a great look for 2011 anyways. A neat start to her research.
Four stories, four kids engaged in project-based learning, four beginnings to what will be awesome presentations in a few weeks. These "identity narratives" start with student-generated content and speak to the heart of the big themes and skills in SS9, SS10, SS11, History 12 curriculum, and cool connections to events that had significance to Canada and the World. These kids will walk into every subsequent class, family conversation, and learning situation armed with social context, historical perspective, and a view of the world that extends ever further from their selves... what an absolutely amazing day to be a Social Studies teacher!
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Showing posts with label role-play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label role-play. Show all posts
Friday, November 04, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
A New Home

Social Studies 10, early Canadian history... yesterday and today we used a simulation/role-play to explore what life in Upper Canada might have been like in the early 1800s. Most of this activity I borrowed from other teachers (like Rob) and an old print resource -- on paper it looks corny and old school, but for some reason the students buy in immediately and will keep it up for hours. After figuring out who was rich and who was poor, they were scheming how to raise funds for building a school, how to set up a shipping system for exporting goods, wealthy folks offering land in exchange for monopolizing skills of the poor (e.g. exclusive rights to the cobbler's services), lots of marrying and deals. One of the students whose role card said "judge" has built a courthouse and is now granting land on behalf of the colony in exchange for promising contracts to improve life for the colonists. Of course, he ended up with controlling interest in two sawmills and share of the profits from a railway project. Others were arguing over horses and what a broadaxe could do, defining "clergy reserve" and "grist mill." Churches were built ("hey what's a presbyterian?"), docks and bridges were stretched across the river, and roads cleared. Gender and race came up, as did wealth, distribution service to community, and representation. Somewhat surprisingly, environmental issues did not come up much -- almost all were content use every scrap of resource, to log off their land grants and mill the wood ASAP. I was really quite something to see two classes of teens being very excited to imagine and act out a different time and place for two hours -- no props, not prep, no fixed rules. This is a nice little shared learning experience that helps gel a class and anticipate the big questions and learning outcomes of the course. It gives them a phenomenological foundation and embodied empathy for the challenges of pioneer culture, setting the stage for their own heritage inquiry further into the course. Many asked if they could "keep the game going" tomorrow -- one girl thought we had switched into these roles for the whole course and would make our way through the curriculum in the first person. What an intriguing idea! I asked if she thought she could handle being in character for 4 months and she said "why not, its a great way to learn." Needless to say I'm thinking of the next opportunity to (re)introduce a role-play.
My plan is to have them synthesize in a narrative what they learned/did in the last two days with what they have been studying from text/teacher/library sources about British North America in the 1820s. I've done this activity and follow-up for a few years, trying to add to the simplicity and joy of the role-play with a little bit of relevant/elegant technology. Now if we had a wireless network or working computers I could get them to video-journal their experience and send it to me as an assignment and self-assessment. Too much to ask, I suppose -- what was accessible, easy, functional, and progressive from 2003-2009 is now out of reach... can someone explain to me how that is moving forward? The mac I had set up for video-journalling has been removed, as have the computers at the back of my class, but have not been replaced. We have a secured wirelesss network that we're not allowed to use, and the public wireless has not yet arrived. Cellphones and email are still blocked (in terms of policy), and virtually every one of the district-level supports for innovative use of technology has been undermined or axed. I suppose the kids with smartphones can work around the deficit of technology, but there are many that will have to wait out the "21st Century Learning" possibilities of this activity until our school gets its act together.
I'm not frustrated, though. This activity was about movement and problem-solving and creative engagement, and most of the students will be happy to write up their stories on paper or a computer and submit them to me and the class. The video option is powerful, though, so I may try to figure out a Plan C for getting the students in front of a webcam to talk about life at their "New Home."
Labels:
embodiment,
heritage,
identity,
role-play,
technology,
wireless
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