Sharing the Stories

Suggested Activities

In this culminating challenge, students consider the impact on Canada of a group, such as First Nations, Métis or Inuit; Francophones in western Canada; British immigrants; European immigrants or non-European immigrants. Using information gathered in other critical challenges, students create a powerful visual representation of the most significant impacts of all these groups.

Develop criteria for significant impact
Invite students to brainstorm criteria for determining significant impact. Possible criteria include the following:

• clearly connect to the cultural group
• changed other's beliefs, ideas, practices
• greatly improved the lives of others
• long-lasting impact.

Determine and present most significant impact of a group
Ask students to work in teams or partners to review the impact of an assigned group by using the generated criteria. Invite students to determine which of these contributions were most significant. As a team, students should reach consensus on the most significant impact of its assigned group.

You might want to use the chart found in Rating Options (Support Material) to organize this activity.

Arrange for each team to present its findings and reasons to the class.

Develop criteria for effectiveness of a collage
As a class, discuss the criteria for an effective visual collage, such as:

• clearly shows the assigned group's main contribution and its impact
• is visually attractive and interesting
• includes visuals only.

Prepare and display visual presentations
After students have completed the visual representation for their assigned group, assemble the visuals into a collage. Consider using a large outline map of Canada as a backdrop.

Interpret and summarize the visual display
After the collage has been mounted, invite students to identify, individually, the cultural groups and contributions represented by the images prepared by other students. Ask students to use index cards to record the name of the cultural group, the contributions they see represented and their impact.

Collect and sort the cards according to the cultural groups they describe. Distribute one set of cards to each original student team in such a manner that each team now has a different cultural group assigned. Using these index cards, students are to prepare an accurate summary of their newly assigned cultural group's contributions. Teams will share these summaries with the class and attach the cards to the appropriate images on the collage.