Students Become Citizens of their Own Country as they Study Canadian Government and Human Geography
The Civic Mirror is an outstanding resource that allows students to experientially cover the learning outcomes in the Canadian Government and Human Geography units in Social Studies 11, better preparing them for the provincial exams. Below we have outlined how teachers can pair the course readings with the Civic Mirror event sequence in order to maximize student engagement and interest in the curriculum. Every lesson plan is provided in the Civic Mirror Instructor’s manual and the online Educator’s Space.
By no means is the only way to implement the Civic Mirror into Social Studies 11.
COURSE INRODUCTIONS
We strongly recommend introducing the Civic Mirror (event 1) and running the Practice Run (event 2) in the first week of classes as you go over your course outline and expectations. This will allow you to introduce and use the CM rewards system from the start, which will likely motivate your students to work extra hard.
UNIT 1: CANADIAN GOVERNANCE
As students build their Civic Mirror nation and learn about the various political and economic events they’ll be participating in the themselves, they’ll actually be learning how Canadian law and government works. Budget 17 – 20 lessons (3.5 to 4 weeks) for this unit.
Here’s a quick synopsis:
POLITICAL SPECTRUM:
Have students study the major political-economic systems before they receive their Civic Mirror Hidden Agendas, helping them better understand where they’ll fall within the political spectrum. This also helps them understand what their Hidden Agenda is really asking them to do in the grand scheme of things. (3 lessons)
CANADIAN CIVIC ISSUES:
Introduce Canada’s major civic and cultural issues (e.g. multi-culturalism, Quebec sovereignty, Aboriginal sovereignty, regionalism) as students create their Civic Mirror national identity. These issues will become themes throughout the history portion of the course, and introducing them now will provide students with the opportunity to think about what their country’s issues will be, making the history unit all the more interesting. (3 lessons)
THE CHARTER + HUMAN RIGHTS & FREEDOMS:
Study the Canadian Constitution Acts, The Charter, and Human Rights and Freedoms while you lead your students through the Civic Mirror’s Pre-Game Constitutional events. (3 lessons)
ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES:
Pair the study of Canada’s electoral system, its political parties, platforms, and electoral reform with the Civic Mirror’s political party formation, election debates and campaigns and ballot casting events. (4 lessons)
BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT:
Have students preview the Civic Mirror’s House of Commons, Town Halls, and National Court events and, after reading about these institutions in their text, they critique how well they do or do not simulate these institutions as they exist in Canada today. (3 lessons)
PROPERTY AUCTION:
After the unit exam, and to have some fun with this event and treat it as a reward, run the Hex Auction the day after the government unit exam. (1 lesson)
UNIT 2: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY UNIT
The Civic Mirror’s connections with this unit are incredible, except for the content on population, which would need to be taught separately. Your students’ Civic Mirror nation will be one reeling with economic, environmental, and political issues that will help them understand and appreciate the global issues being studies in S.S.11.
We recommend scheduling 2 simulated years for this unit, devoting 1.5 weeks to the first simulated year and the study of world population issues, and the remaining 2.5 weeks to the all of the remaining content in this unit. Specifically:
POVERTY CYCLE:
The poverty cycle fits great because the Civic Mirror starts with economic shortages. Many students will incur family deaths, many more struggle to make ends meet, and a select few (usually the ones who own the powerful properties in the game), will do really well (i.e. oligopolies). Asking your students to analyze how the poverty cycle exists in their own country will be an easy and very educational exercise to carry out.
NATIONAL INDEXING:
Generating discussions about how their simulated countries might be similar or different to underdeveloped, developing, and developed nations in the real world will also be educationally valuable. In fact, the Civic Mirror has national indexing measurements that students can use to compare and contrast how their country stacks up against real world countries, analyzing factors like literacy rates, mortality rates, access to health care, government corruption, etc.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:
One of the big challenges in the Civic Mirror (at least in the first few simulated years) is whether or not to temporarily sacrifice economic prosperity in order to develop the economy for the long term. Some classes of students are never able to accomplish this with their simulated nations, and students learn what ‘political will’ really means.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
The Civic Mirror also relates to environmental issues because there are serious consequences when too many wilderness properties are developed (i.e. random deaths). There are many opportunities to connect the simulated experience to issues like climate change, soil erosion, etc. Lots of opportunities for outstanding lessons here too.
GLOBAL ISSUES ANALYSIS
Near the end of the unit, we recommend you use our Civic Mirror Global Issues Assignment. Basically students are put into groups to research and decide what country in the real world is most like their own Civic Mirror country. They then benchmark their findings against Canada’s rankings, allowing them to realize just how lucky we are … all while mastering the course content. One student group reported:
“Our country is like Nigeria! We have a corrupt government, an energy problem, no health care or education, no welfare programs or social safety net, and our country is run by an oligarchy who’s only interested in making money.”
UNIT 3: HISTORY UNIT
Throughout the first two units, every third class (roughly) involves a Civic Mirror event. When you shift to the history unit, we recommend scheduling CM Events once a week to keep things fun and alive. Because of the sheer amount of information students must cover in this unit, we ease off on the frequency.
That said, there is still enough curricular relevance to continue on with it. For example, students will ‘get’ the Great Depression because they will have had experience as citizens, politicians, business-owners and family providers in their own simulated economy … that starts depressed! Many of your students will be able to empathize with the humiliation felt by the citizens who had to stand in line to get their government assistance cheques because similar activity is happening in their own country.
Your students will ‘get’ the political platforms of the Canadian parties over the past 100 years because they will have created and voted for their own political parties, each with its own platform. This will also help them – ironically – empathize with the politicians we study throughout history (as evidenced in the “What Students Say” video) because they will have been discussing and debating their own national issues in the Civic Mirror.
In sum, after participating in the Civic Mirror, the content in the SS11 history unit will simply make more sense for your students because they will be able relate to it. They are going to have their own country, constitution, economy, environment, legal system, controversial civic issues (and some cultural), etc.
Their participation in The Civic Mirror will provide them an experiential frame of reference that will help them better understand – and appreciate the significance of – the historical events they are being asked to study. That is, of course, so long as you – the teacher – help them make these connections through guided reflection and instruction.
SOCIAL STUDIES 10 ALTERNATIVE
If you think this scope and sequence is too tight for your delivery of SS11, check out our sensible idea of integrating the Civic Mirror and SS11′s Canadian Governance unit with the Social Studies 10 curriculum.
