Social Studies 8

In the winter/spring of 2017 I was lucky enough to teach a mini-unit of my own creation to the grade 8s at St. Dominic's. The following is a summary of how that went, demonstrating my growth and development as a planner and a teacher.

Pre-assessment - 8.3.17.

Wednesday March 8 I preassessed the grade 8 class for treaty knowledge. I based these questions on the Saskatchewan grades 7 and 8 curriulum, and the Pearson Saskatchewan grade 7 social studies textbook unit on treaties which their school had used the previous year, to see what knowledge the students might have retained, in a casual, low stakes manner. I told the students I wanted to get a sense of what they knew, and assured them there was no grading or pressure about "getting it right", and that it would help me to teach them better if they just answered what they knew. I told the students that if they did not know the answer to any questions, that it was nothing to worry about, and was rather just stuff we could address in class.

Here are some of the grade 8 responses to preassessment questions.

preassessment.docx

The questions asked were:

What is a treaty? What is the big deal with treaties legally?

What treaty area do we live in?

What does we are all treaty people mean to you?

Who are the Indigenous groups in Saskatchewan - true or false: a) Cree; b) Blood; c) Kainai; d) Assiniboine; e) Dene; f) Dakota; g) Ojibway; h) Saulteaux?

What does kinship mean to Indigenous people?

have you ever heard of a pipe ceremony? What is the significance of a pipe ceremony?

What is the significance of the land to Indigenous people?

As you can see, there was a broad sampling of knowledge in the class. Students had some rudimentary understanding of simple facts; we live in treaty 6, which Indigenous groups live in there area. I tried to vary the names, but nobody did recognize that Blood and Kainai or Ojibway and Saulteaux are the same groups with different names. What this showed me was that the students were fairly familiar with the content, but understandings were still vague. There was little specificity on what a treaty is, how they matter legally, or what the benefits of treaties were. Roughly the same was true of kinship and Indigenous worldview. The grade seven OTC Saskatchewan Treaty Curriculum wants students to examine the Indian Act and kinship patterns; these students may have carried out some examination and research, but it was clear that their understanding of basic facts was there but that meaning needed to be constructed.

This is the unit plan I was given. At the beginning, I was told to teach from lesson 3.

DR8.1 Develop an understanding of the significance of land on the evolution of Canadian identity.

DR8.2 Describe the influence of the treaty relationship on Canadian identity.

DR8.3 Assess how historical events in Canada have affected the present Canadian identity

With the concept of worldview introduced, my lesson was to introduce the history of the treaties, and the respective worldviews of Indigenous and European people.

grade 8 treaty unit plan.docx

Lesson 1 - 14.3.17

I wanted to make a good first impression, so I went all out on the history I would attempt to cover, and having a PowerPoint to accompany the lesson. However, I want to use PowerPoints regularly, as the multimedia display helps keep students engaged, while I want to curb the amount of content.

history of treaties w.speaking notes.docx

History of the treaties.pptx

Above left: Lesson plan w/speaking notes. Right: PowerPoint (open in PPT to see all content).

20170314_132450.mp4

Pipestem Handout.docx

This was my first lesson with this class, and my first time making a PowerPoint for use. I can tell how nervous I was to try the performance of teaching, but I think this lesson went well. I'm happy to have video of this to go back over and see where I need to tweak. Things I noticed were

Should I answer the big questions, or leave them hang?
Paraphrase or in some way help translate quotes I use in the PPT - I need to have strategies to bring the students to the learning, rather than just giving them a quote to figure out.
Explain fictive/biological kinship difference.
I forgot to talk about the Dakota & 1812.
Be more careful to listen, understand, and validate students when they perform knowledge.

20170314_140239.mp4

In this lesson I tried to:

- introduce the concept of fictive kinship within Indigenous worldview (and yet I failed to explicitly address the term fictive kinship - oops)

- demonstrate that the relationship of treaty in Canada started with a blending of the most sacred parts of law and spirituality of each worldview

My biggest take away here was to point at the outcomes better.

I worry that I am not doing an effective enough job of bringing students to understandings in the lesson because I wonder how I am going to assess them of the knowledge, and if everything I am giving them is taking them to this knowledge.

Information and content need be carefully and effectively planned for impact and purpose; people can easily become overwhelmed by info regardless, but especially in learning experiences.

Lessons 2&3 - 21/22.3.17

The first lesson was recorded by my fellow TC, Lowell Johnston. Mr. Johnston joined me in the class for all of these lessons, and we co-taught them, with myself leading the lessons, and Mr. Johnson manipulating media on the Smart Board so that we could pull up Wikipedia pages, YouTube videos, or Google and discuss terms.

This lesson I started out planning to use the OTC video "A solemn undertaking" with a handout question sheet, as suggested by the Pearson grade 8 Saskatchewan Social Studies teacher's guide. After watching the video and answering the questions, I felt like the students weren't ready for it, and in consultation with Mr. Johnston, we made a new plan for ensuing lessons.

grade 8 Treaty lesson 21 march.docx

Above: Lesson plan w/speaking notes. You can see in my notes that I prepare for terminology and vocabulary; we cannot have a discussion about sovereignty if we don't know what it means.

After the first lesson, I was pretty upset. My handwritten notes show what I mean; I planned to use the Pearson texts - the school apparently had a full set of for the grade 7s, but not grade 8. When it came time to use the book, I was blown away to find out the school only had two books for the class. I had the class break into two and had two groups of ten sharing a book each while I paced around leading them with my notes. I had expected that we could 'popcorn' the readings from the text, and that I could read the more difficult passages with students following along, but that did not work so well, and with the recap and fact that our lesson time was 45 mins on Tuesday, and only 30 on Wednesday, we never got to the difficult reading passage or the OTC video.

Mr. Johnston suggested that we finish the readings on the 22nd (Wednesday), and have the students read another handout I had as a possibility to use, from the OTC called "First Nations and British (Western) Historical Worldviews," and complete questions for homework. The following Tuesday when we returned to school we could have the students jigsaw the handout in sections for political, economic, and spiritual worldviews, and then have them create Venn diagrams.

Lesson 3 - 28.3.17

Because there was a field trip planned for the grade 8s on Wednesday, March 29th, Mr. Johnston and I had the class only on Tuesday this week. We therefore had this lesson to again briefly touch on previous class ideas like the War of 1812/Treaty of Ghent and their significance to Treaty history, and the Royal Proclamation, as well as recapping specific worldviews. The class then created their Venn diagrams in a jigsaw style activity where we shared and discussed findings after the lesson.

Grade 8 treaty lesson 28 march.docx

This was the first lesson I tackled without speaking notes. Attached to the lesson plan is the handout and some answers and notes I devised to answer the questions. I didn't end up using them much, but I still like to have a back up just in case my brain piles up on me for whatever reason. In these notes you'll see that I went and brushed up on the concepts of morals, values, and ethics so that we could have that discussion in class if necessary.

I spent a late night with MS Paint making a really cute (read: cheesy and poorly constructed) Venn diagram of all the student groups' answers. We had a good laugh about my hilarious MS Paint skills.

Lessons 4 & 5 - 4/5.4.17

For the next lessons, I decided to give myself a bit of a break in leading the class, and to try the OTC video with points to stop and discuss. On the second day, I had an essential question on the board which asked a question based on the Dynamic Relationships outcomes. I thought it would be worth trying to see if the students could make a cogent answer with the information I gave them to satisfy curricular outcomes. There were definitely some answers that worked, but the question was too wordy and convoluted; we spent some time going over it, which was good, but demonstrated to me that I need to work on making myself easier to understand.

The lesson plan below includes my speaking notes, handouts, and answers to the handouts. The motivational set with Hellen Keller quote was very effective.

CEY_JOHNSTON_LessonPlanApril4-5.docx

These classes were very fun for me. Having Mr. Johnston again at one side of the class to bounce ideas off of and control media on the Smart Board while I guided discussion was very relaxed and effective.

Right: feedback from substitute teacher Tuesday, and Mrs. Young Wednesday.

grade 8 treaty leasson 4 april FEEDBACK.docx

It's apparent that I have yet to work on classroom management, some communication skills for clarity in language, and planning for questioning and assessment. Some of this is directly relative to the unit I was given to construct; it had no foreseeable end point, and so I was loosely aiming towards DR outcomes. This was fine, but had I had full control of the class, the unit would have looked more like the other unit plans I have devised on this website. Nonetheless, this was an important practice run for me in the classroom, and I'll never forget it.

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