Previous Page (From Saskatchewan Education - Social Studies Curriculum - June 1995)

Suggested Approaches

UNIT ONE: IDENTITY - MODULE THREE - OUR FAMILIES

  • Use a variety of resources to explore the general characteristics and the functions of families.
  • Provide opportunities for students to share information about their families in various formats such as discussion, photographs, pictures, and models (plasticine).
  • Create personal books, "This Is My Family", providing students with sentence frames.
    Explain that you belong to a family too. Describe your family.
  • Make a web of your family and have students working in groups to make webs of theirs.
  • Divide the students into small groups and give them a short period of time (5 minutes) to discuss, "What is a family?" Share ideas with the class. Prepare a chart starting with the frame: A family_________________.
  • Invite students to bring pictures of their families. Display them on the bulletin board.
  • Start a chart of words about the family. Add to the chart throughout the year.
  • Learn family words in other languages.
  • Extend language experiences by turning sentences that you have developed about the family into questions and using them as discussion starters. For example, "A family shares,"becomes "How does a family share?" Make a big book using the sentence frame to start each page. Give one page to each child to draw or glue in a picture.
  • Make a graph or number book about family size.
  • Have the students use Plasticine to make models of the people in their family

 

UNIT TWO: HERTIAGE - MODULE TWO - FAMILIES IN THE PAST

Suggested Approaches
Use a variety of resources to explore family lifestyles of the past. Consider including the following:

  • jobs around the home for both children and adults.
  • procedures and technologies used for preparing food, doing the laundry, taking baths, making clothes, and cleaning the house.
  • games children played.
  • home construction, for example, a traditional tipi or a sod house. (See Saskatchewan Past and Present kit, developed for Grade 4, for pictures.)
  • As much as possible, present factual material through stories, pictures, and real or simulated experiences. Plan to visit a local museum where the children are actually involved in activities such as washing clothes on a wash board, making butter in a churn, or listening to a story while sitting inside a tipi.
  • If a museum visit is not possible, have the students create models (e.g., homes), collect "old things" from the community and re-enact various activities, or have the students pretend to do various tasks. (Note: Some archives and museums have kits of materials that are available to schools.)
  • In discussing the past, ask both "How?" and "Why?" questions. Relate to the availability of resources and technology. Guide students to not judge experiences and technologies of the past as being necessarily inferior to those of the present. Guide them to see advantages in lifestyles of the past (e.g., less pollution, more self - sufficient).
  • Have each student chat with or interview an older person like a grandparent. Establish the questions to be asked ahead of time or discuss with the older people what they should talk about. Have a Grade 8 student videotape the interview.