Social studies was something we struggled with a little when we were planning. Not because we don’t know the material ourselves, but because there is so much of it! Where do we start? It would be easy to spend months just studying different indigenous cultures, without even touching on Europeans and why they came here and all the interactions between the two.

We needed to find a way to touch on all these subjects without going so in-depth that we ended up not covering something else because it’s all important.

We ended up purchasing a resource from Teachers Pay Teachers (which is an awesome site, with paid and free resources). This resource cost us $10, but it was so worth it! The Complete Grade 5 Ontario Social Studies Inquiry-Based Unit is exactly what you would expect it to be. It covers the whole curriculum and includes some worksheets too.

For our first day of social studies, Liam and Steven went through the first section of the booklet, which discusses how different First Nations tribes governed themselves and then did the first worksheet. And then I printed out a second worksheet so Steven could go read up (online) on other indigenous cultures and do it again. I’m sure this isn’t something there’s normally time for in the classroom, but with just one student we’re finding there’s a lot more time for additional learning.

Stay safe,
~Lauren