Municipalities Matter

This introductory lesson is designed for teachers and students to identify what Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Education calls the “big ideas” that will frame this unit. The lesson’s intensive study of the municipality that students call home can be used to build understandings of a community’s history, current state, and relationship with broader environments. This localised context can provide a footing for developing lifelong learners who are engaged citizens with a sense of self, community, and place.

Suggested Curriculum Links

The broad nature of this lesson’s major project allows teachers and students to take several directions within the Social Studies 8 curriculum. The major project can be constructed around several Indicators within the following Outcomes:

• Interactions and Interdependence 8.2;
• Dynamic Relationships 8.1 through 8.3; and
• Resources and Wealth 8.1 through 8.3.

Procedure

1. As a class, discuss the differences between municipalities using What is a Municipality?

2. Use Saskatchewan Names and Places to familiarize students with various Saskatchewan municipalities.

3. To discover information about local governance, politics, and history, have students seek out relevant information portals. Just a few suggestions include your public library’s local history collection, local newspapers and blogs, and government data sources such as Statistics Canada. Aggregate these sources in a central hub. This will provide your class with a starting point to research the assignments and activities in this resource. Encourage the class to continue to add sources to your hub as the unit proceeds. In creating a central data hub, teachers are strongly encouraged to create an activity for students to evaluate the biases and perspectives of each of these information sources. Suggested resources for creating such an activity could include:

• Media Literacy 101, MediaSmart’s video series on key concepts surrounding media awareness.
• Lesson 2.4: The Media and Political Coverage of Our Government, Our Election Second Edition.

4. Using Our Municipality: Now and Then break students into four groups. Assign each group one of:

• The Basics
• Infrastructure and the Economy
• Community History
• Community History: Pre-colonisation

Have groups create a presentation that includes a poster/web page/other representation. These presentations will function as anchor points for understanding the community and for building context for forthcoming lessons.

Teachers with students from several municipalities may wish to adapt this assignment so each student studies the specific municipality in which they live.

Further Exploration
5. Because the entire community can be used as a classroom, it is important to recognize the benefit of place-based education. Of interest is A Very Cold Walk through Saskatoon, a feature about Saskatoon’s Outdoor School program on CBC Radio One’s The Afternoon Edition.