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Intermediate – Middle School
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Think Like a Historian: The Halifax Explosion

Think Like a Historian: The Halifax Explosion


The Think Like a Historian series of videos and resources is a curriculum-based learning tool to build skills to analyze and interpret primary sources.Watch the videos, and download the education guide and worksheets to learn the five key steps to analyzing primary sources.

In this series, we look at letters and sketches from the Halifax Explosion of 1917.


Elementary – Primary
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Historica Canada

Here's My Canada Timeline

In 2017, Canada turns 150! In marking Canada’s sesquicentennial, Historica Canada is highlighting 50 events that have helped shape our country since Confederation. At the same time, it is important to note that that the human history of what is now known as Canada began well before 1867. Indigenous peoples lived on this land long before European contact, and have histories that significantly predate modern Canada. We can look back upon many proud moments in our history, but must also examine...
Intermediate – Middle School
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Historica Canada

The Canadian Encyclopedia Teacher Guide

The Canadian Encyclopedia

The Canadian Encyclopedia is a free, bilingual resource of over 20,000 fact-checked articles and learning tools about Canada's history and culture. The Canadian Encyclopedia has hundreds of resources for teachers including timelines, quizzes and education guides covering provincial and territorial curriculum topics for social sciences & history, Indigenous studies, geography & sciences, civics and more. Visit thecanadianencyclopedia.ca.
Elementary – Primary
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Historica Canada

Indigenous Arts & Stories Teacher's Kit

This learning tool is intended to help teachers support their students in the Indigenous Arts & Stories competition (formerly known as Aboriginal Arts & Stories). Using this guide, educators can assist Indigenous youth with the creative process of developing their art and writing. It offers suggestions for dealing with sensitive issues, for motivating Indigenous students, and for encouraging youth to reflect on culture, identity and expression.


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Historica Canada

Passchendaele Education Guide

The guide's purpose is to enhance your students’ learning and appreciation of the pivotal role that this 1917 battle played within Canadian history. The questions and activities of the guide also aim to have students examine issues and situations from an individual, humanistic point of view as well as from a macro perspective.

Structured around five primary sources from the First World War, this guide asks students to think and to empathize as they analyze and deconstruct those pieces of...

Madame La Bolduc


Overview


This lesson is based on viewing the Madame La Bolduc biography from The Canadians series. It explores the personality and career of Mary Travers Bolduc, who was one of Québec's greatest singing sensations. She was one of the first recording artists to give the Québecois a sense of pride in their language.

Aims


With a variety of writing and role-playing activities, students will consider the accomplishments of La Bolduc. Students will reflect on her career within its historical...

Memento Mori: Bringing the Classroom to the Cemetery


Overview


Early graveyards offer the educator a unique opportunity to employ primary historical information to engage and excite students as they learn about their local history. Information gained from the stones relating to birth and death dates, surnames, and family relationships have a practical application in the study of history. Gravestones should also be viewed as a form of expression capable of providing insight into aspects of eighteenth and nineteenth century life. The visual...

Six-String Nation Guitar


Overview


Inspired by the Six String Nation Guitar, students will produce something (quilt, boat, sculpture) made up of significant historical materials in their locale. Students are to document their research and produce a visual documentary that tells the story of their product.

Aims


Students will use the following skills in this project

  • Story-telling/creating a narrative
  • Research skills
  • Critical judgment
  • Creativity
  • Synthesis
  • Cooperation
  • Interviewing
  • Film-Production

Background


CBC radio...

World War One Recruitment Posters


Overview


When Canada entered the First World War in 1914, men of all ages enlisted by the thousands. However, this zeal waned as reports of casualty rates arrived home. Recruitment posters were an integral part of encouraging men and women to enlist at all points between 1914 and 1918. They appealed to the many motivations for enlistment and used various propaganda techniques to achieve their goal. In this activity, students will examine reasons for enlistment, recruitment posters, and...

Novel Study


Overview


Students will read a Canadian novel to determine whether it provides an accurate picture of a Canadian event, experience, or character. In order to complete the assignment, students are expected to note the political, social, and economic circumstances outlined in the novel. Using primary and secondary sources the students will then write a report outlining the value of the novel as a historical source.

Aims


Students will:

  • make judgements about the significance of people and events...

TimeLinks - Analysis of Historical Photographs


Overview


This lesson is based on viewing historical photographs from the TimeLinks Image Archive. This website has a collection of over 2,000 images from Manitoba’s history. TimeLinks is concerned mainly with the decade from 1910 to 1920.

Aims


Students will learn how to interpret historical photographs. This will include identification of objects, persons and events. Students will consider the time, the place, and the purpose behind the photographs.

Activities


Time Allowance:
75 minutes

...

Northrop Frye


Overview


This lesson is based on viewing the Northrop Frye biography from The Canadians series. It explores the life and writings of Frye, who was one of Canada's greatest thinkers. He struggled with questions about Canadian identity and the nature of Canada with depth and humour. His ideas and passion have influenced many of today's writers and thinkers.

Aims


These activities challenge students to explore the issues and ideas that Frye wrote about and taught. Students will explore these...

War Art in the First World War and the Second World War


Overview


The impact of the First World War and the Second World War on artists and the art they produced cannot be denied. Along with everything else in Western society, the creators of art and the art they created post-war were much different than anything that had come before 1914. This lesson is about the depiction of war and its aftermath by artists affected by the conflicts. They may or may not have been participants.

Aims


To have students understand the nature of the art produced...

Soldier Poetry of the First World War


Overview


Students learn more of the First World War by way of a study of the Canadian, British, and American soldier poets that served in France and Belgium.

Aims


Students will search and read the poetry of their soldier poet. It is hoped that they will choose a poem or two that appeals to them and ones in which they can examine word choice, imagery, mood, and figurative language. The pair of students will research and write a biography of their soldier poet. The aim here is that the students...

First World War Newspaper


Overview


Students create a newspaper, from a distinct perspective, that exemplifies an event of the First World War. This project can be modified to the Second World War. The full assignment is attached below.

Aims


Students will gain a greater understanding and appreciation of a specific aspect of the Great War. Students will gain competence is print presentation methods. Other goals can be added to this project to meet specific teacher's needs and curricular outcomes.

Background


This project...

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