Grade 7 Canadian History

Jody Pereverzoff and Chris Dittmann- Grade 7 Humanities

We invited David Scott, a former CSS teacher, to collaborate on a unit to engage students in early Canadian history and provide students an opportunity to wrestle with why we learn history and whether history is important to understand. We asked ourselves what most Canadians think of history in general, and Canadian history specifically. We came upon the government’s Heritage Minister lamenting the fact that Canadians do not know our own history. He went so far as to call this current situation a future threat to Canada as a country. We read this article as a class and students offered their reactions to it: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/11/country-in-jeopardy-if-ca_n_3422683.html.


We then took the question of the importance of learning and knowing Canadian history to our students, brainstormed why Canadian history is important to them and also reasons why it is not. This culminated in each class engaging in a “horseshoe” debate, where students had to take a position on a horseshoe shaped pendulum according to how strongly they either agreed or disagree with the statement, “It is important for Canadian students to learn and understand our country’s history”. Students had the opportunity to change their mind move themselves closer to the middle (undecided) area of the pendulum or towards the more certain yes or no verdicts on the statement. We found our students very engaged in the debate and received many requests to extend the debate or start a new one. The table below describes some of the more prevalent arguments for both the yes and no sides of the statement.

Yes	Maybe	No
If we understand the past, we can learn to solve current problems and not make the same mistakes	Some events could be important enough to study, while others are not	We as Canadians don’t focus on the negative  (we are supposed to be kind, multicultural people. We want to focus on a positive future
To better understand who we are as Canadians and how we got to where we are If we didn’t know of others struggles, we might take our rights for granted	How do we decide what events are worth knowing? Who decides what events are important in Canada's history?	People directly impacted may not want to re-live the past People have learned it and studied it in school but don’t remember anyway so why should we? History is BORING!

Next, we created a collection of events found in pre-Confederation history (found in General Outcome 7.1 – Toward Confederation of the Alberta Grade 7 Social Studies Curriculum, as well as on historicalthinking.ca). We created a sheet of paper for each event, including only the title of the event and a visual depiction of the event. We then instructed students to browse each event, making a list of those events that interested them the most. Students were told that they would be assigned an event with a partner, based on their common interest and compatibility. Students were challenged to find evidence supporting the historical significance of their event. This is when we introduced students to the concept of historical thinking. As a class, we generated criteria to explore the question, “What makes an historical event significant?” We ended up developing 3 criteria which students deemed vital to proving the significance of an historical event. These were:

• The event impacted a large number of people at the time
• The event had a long-term impact/consequence on Canadians
• The event contributed to making Canada unique and connects to other events in Canadian history.
(See www.historicalthinking.ca for a similar list of criteria)

From here, we told students that they would be participating in a debate with students represent 3 or 4 other pre-Confederation historical events. Their task was to provide evidence for the historical significance of their event as well as prove that other events were less historically significant than their own. The idea for this debate format came from a grade 9 project called “CSS Reads”, developed by our grade 9 teachers in 2012. In this project, students would argue the importance of a specific novel of their choosing, with the goal of their novel being voted “The Ultimate Grade 9 Novel”. Similarly, our goal was to see our students challenge each other and themselves to argue the ultimate historical significance of their event. We found that given the competitive format, students were keen on not only understanding the evidence for the historical significance of their own event, but to also understand the evidence, or lack of, in their opponents’ events.



Ultimately, students provided strong evidence to eliminate events, while supporting the significance of other events in their debate groups. One event from each table was deemed the most significant and each group would become a team in promoting this event's significance in a Common Craft style to share through social media.

Our next blog posting for this assignment will describe the Common Craft assignment, MRU symposium and formative feedback showcase.