A Land of Riches

Suggested Activities

Students learn about the natural resources in various geographical regions of Canada as they select the three most valuable resources in each region according to personal, economic and environmental contributions.

Discuss Canada's abundant resources
Initiate a class discussion about Canada's international reputation as a country with an abundance of natural resources. Invite students to consider the following:

• what natural resources we have
• where the resources are located
• which resources provide the most economic and social value.

Refer to a wall map of Canada and encourage students to brainstorm resources found in each geographical region or province. For example, identify trees and fish in British Columbia, oil in Alberta, minerals in the Interior Plains and fish in the Atlantic/Appalachians.

Create a chart of effects of use of natural resources
Suggest that how we use natural resources affects us in many ways:

• personally—resources and their products affect our quality of life
• economically—resources and their products affect our ability to make money and create jobs
• environmentally—use of resources affects the natural environment; e.g., plants, animals, the ground, the air.

Ask students to brainstorm the effects of the use of trees as a resource. Have them think about how the use of trees and forestry products helps us personally. Then ask students to think of jobs that might be created in the forest industry and how we might make money from forestry products. Finally, ask them to think of how the logging of trees and the use of wood products might affect the environment. List their suggestions and offer your own. You may wish to capture the group brainstorming session using some form of semantic mind mapping software to cluster the ideas.

Here are sample responses for the use of trees.

Effects of Use of Natural Resources

Explore positive and negative effects of the use of resources
Point out that some effects are positive while others are negative. To encourage discussion, use these strategies:

• Present an effect and ask students to indicate whether it is positive or negative.
• Ask students if one type of effect, i.e., personal, economic or environmental, listed in the chart is more negative than the other two.
• Ask students why major positive effects are largely personal and economic, and major negative effects are often environmental.
• Ask students if they can think of negative personal and economic effects; e.g., injuries to loggers while felling trees, money required to build factories.
• Invite students to explore how one effect influences other effects; e.g., creating jobs provides for greater wealth so people want more products.

Research natural resources and the effects of their use
Assign each group a region of Canada. Ask students to use print and digital resources to research types of natural resources, e.g., water, trees, minerals/fossil fuels, soil, fish, fur, and to identify personal, economic and environmental effects of the use of these resources (see References). Encourage students to identify specific examples of each resource; e.g., minerals include gold, zinc and coal.

You may want to adapt the materials in Positive and Negative Factors (Support Material) to structure and assess this activity.

Here is a sample data chart.

Positive and Negative Effects of the Use of Natural Resources

Rank resources by value
Using their data, students identify the first, second and third most valuable natural resources in their assigned region by deciding which resource offers the greatest personal, economic and environmental benefits with the fewest negative effects. Direct students to support their rankings by presenting the positive and negative effects and by explaining why their top-ranked resource is more valuable than their second and third choices.

You may want to adapt the materials in Justifying My Choice (Support Material) to structure and assess this activity.

Present findings
After groups have finished the ranking activity, ask them to present their conclusions to the whole class. To encourage effective presentations, ask the class to brainstorm the criteria for excellent presentations, such as:

• speaks from an outline instead of reading from notes
• ensures class participation
• uses maps or visual aids
• speaks in a clear voice.

Display natural resource icons on a wall map
Ask the class to decide on symbols to represent each natural resource. Encourage students to use computer-generated icons or miniature 3-D representations, such as a twig for trees and crumpled aluminum foil for mining. Direct students to place the appropriate symbols on a wall map of Canada to represent resources in several locations.

This lesson is adapted from Managing Our Natural Wealth, edited by Catriona Misfeldt and Roland Case. Richmond, BC: The Critical Thinking Consortium, 2002, pp. 17–27.