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Defining Key Factors

Select several pictures that best illustrate each factor that influences a community (geography, culture, language, heritage, economics, and resources).


Outcomes References Related Resources

Suggested Activities

In this challenge, students learn about the uniqueness and diversity of communities and identify photographs that illustrate six factors that influence a community–geography, culture, language, heritage, economics and resources. Provide students with an array of pictures that exemplify the six factors. These photographs can be found in government and tourist brochures or websites, and from magazines, calendars and textbooks. The pictures should represent diverse aspects of each factor. For example, in representing resources it would be helpful to include pictures of water, oil, timber, minerals, agriculture and wild animals. Sort the pictures into the six categories and label them. After studying the sorted pictures, invite students to define each factor in their own words (e.g., "Geography is ... "). Find a commonly accepted definition of the six factors in a textbook or dictionary and compare these definitions to those developed by students. If necessary, work with students to amend the definitions.

Once students have some understanding of these six factors, assemble collections of pictures of the factors in the context of Inuit, prairie and Acadian communities. A search of Google™ Image Search for "prairie (Canada)," "Inuit (Canada)" and "Acadia (Canada)" will produce many hundreds of colour prints for each region. You may want to complete this task as a whole class with one of the communities and then assign smaller groups of students to focus on the two remaining communities. The task for students is to identify at least five pictures that illustrate each factor for their assigned community. You may want to further divide groups so that each pair of students is responsible for two factors only. Through discussion, establish the criteria for a "good picture" (e.g., interesting to look at, has a dominant feature that illustrates the identified factor, represents different examples of the identified factor, shows what is unique about the particular community).

Ask students to arrange their collections of pictures on a table or on the computer desktop. Working as a class, select several pictures for each factor in each community that best meet the identified criteria. Display the selected pictures with their definitions on the wall that has been organized by community. For each factor, invite students to look for similarities and differences among the three communities. You may want to adapt the chart and strategies for Collecting Information (Support Material) to structure and assess this last activity. Discuss how life in each community is influenced by these factors.

Last updated: July 1, 2014 | (Revision History)
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