New Curriculum Bringing History to Life

A video clip of Canadian troops in the mud of Passchendaele, a photo of the driving of the last spike on the CP railway and a slide show on Nova Scotia industries are just a few of the online resources that will bring history to life in Grade 11 classrooms this year.

After a successful pilot in 13 schools last year, the Canadian History 11/Histoire du Canada 11 curriculum is now in classrooms across the province. It is one of five courses students can take to fulfill the new Canadian history graduation requirement.

"Our students need to graduate with a good understanding of where they come from in order to lead our society into the future," said Education Minister Jane Purves. "The new Canadian history curriculum will engage students with the full realm of learning tools available to us."

Students taking the new Canadian history course will have many learning resources at their fingertips. The collection of online resources was designed specifically for the Nova Scotia curriculum. A new text book was also designed for the course.

The online collection is on a secure Web site. It includes labs that help students learn how to be historians and a resource centre with photos, maps, video and audio clips, graphs and Web links.

There is also one online learning activity to accompany each of the five units in the curriculum. For example, the activity for the globalization unit requires students to give a recommendation on whether or not Canada should get involved in a fictional modern-day conflict. Their recommendation is to be based on factors that contributed to Canada's past decisions to go to war and the circumstances of the current conflict.

"Canadian History 11 marries one of our key subjects with the power of today's technology," said Theresa Kewachuk, a Grade 11 history teacher at Hants East Rural High in Milford Station. "Now, our students can use their Internet skills to learn our nation's history in a way that their parents never could."

This year's Grade 11 students will be the first to graduate in 2003-04 with the new Canadian history requirement. In addition to Canadian History 11, students can choose from African Canadian Studies 11, Mi'kmaq Studies 10, Études Acadiennes 11, and Gaelic Studies 11 to meet the requirement for graduation in June 2004.