This week we started an assignment called "The Birth Lottery" where students randomly drew a country to become their new "Birth Country." The students were very excited and curious about having a "new" (pretend of course) county of birth! On Tuesday we looked at the Canadian Geographic site navigation and on Thursday we will be looking at what the various terms mean (building vocabulary).
This assignment is to help the children to understand that they were born into a country of great wealth and opportunity where children have the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the "United Nations Declaration of Human Rights." It is also designed to "scaffold" our students to help them build background knowledge about the quality of life in other countries.
The curriculum link is: • uses simple maps to interpret and present information
The students have a series of questions to answer comparing their new"Birth Country" to Canada. The guiding questions are in their Social Studies duotang. The site we are using for this task is:
http://worldmap.canadiangeographic.ca/
The assignment is considered complete when all of the fact finding questions are completed and the reflection questions on the last page have a connection that the child has made to his/her quality of life.
"Fully meets" means that the student will be able to "make a connection" between his/her quality of life in Canada and what the quality of life for a child in a developing country is like.
I encourage you to discuss this assignment with your child. If they are curious about any of the facts they find, please help them find answers to the questions they may have. The conversations that you have with your child are so valuable! Please share your viewpoint, your questions and your experiences.
The reflection questions on the last page are the "deep thinking" questions. Your son/daughter may need help to answer these questions because they are still building life experience. It's OK to prompt your child by asking questions and giving background information.
In class we have been talking about community services such as: healthcare, education, sanitation (clean water and waste disposal), roads/electricity/municipal services, housing, food and transportation-but we are just beginning to build our knowledge about these topics.
We would like to be able to present our learning on Monday and Tuesday next week with the students sharing one reflection question from the last page (they can choose which one.)
Once again, thank you for your continued support. Ms. Glups and I sincerely appreciate the partnership that we have with you in educating your son/daughter!
