LESSON PLAN

Subject: Social Studies Grade: 5 Date: March 21, 2018

Critical Inquiry Question: Should Confederation be Celebrated?
Lesson: Introduction of the CPR Time:
SLOs:
 How did the building of Canada's national railway affect the development of
Canada?

Instructional Objectives:
Knowledge:
Students will understand that there were challenges to building the railroad.
Students will understand that building the railroad impacted First Nations peoples’ way
of life.
Students will recall information about the physical regions they studied previously to
identify challenges to building the railroad
Students will understand how building the railroad contributed to build Canada

Key Questions:
1. Why was a railway built?
2. What does this have to do with building Canada?
3. How was the railway started?
4. Who built the railway?
5. What were some challenges to building the railway?

Materials:
 CPR story
 Have a picture of Canada in 1870 to point out the distance between he eastern
regions and B.C. put up in the smart board.
 Reading guide


Preparation:
 Have the CPR story printed enough for one copy per group.
 Have a picture of Canada in 1870 to point out the distance between he eastern
regions and B.C. put up in the smart board.
 Arrange groups according to the groups that they worked with to do the physical
regions poster.

Adaptations:

Students reading at grade level will assist students reading below grade level.
The CPR story is written in Student friendly text to be more engaging and easier to read
Students who are finished early can
Lesson Procedure:

Intro (10 minutes)

1. Review answers to questions that students completed last class.

2. Confederation Warm-up.
3. One of the other factors that contributed to Confederation was the building of a
cross country railway
Body
4. Get students to brainstorm reasons why they think building a railroad would
contribute to building Canada. (They wanted to build this to unite Canada, create
economic growth and populate in interior region of Canada.) Show them a picture
of Canada before B.C. joined. Explain that the fathers of Confederation thought it
was the only way to create a united country from sea to sea.
5. Get students to review the physical regions within Canada and estimate some of
the challenges that might be faced with based on their knowledge of the physical
regions.
6. Get students into the groups they were in when they did the physical regions
projects and estimate challenges.
7. Allow students time to share what they think some of the challenges would be.
8. In the same groups they had for the physical regions project, each student will get
one page from the CPR story.(http://cpconnectingcanada.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2017/05/cp-history-for-students.pdf)
9. They will get a reading guide to complete. In each group they will complete the
whole reading guide. One or two group members will retrieve a laptop.
10. The students will write out the answer to the question on the paper. Then each
group member will have a turn to type up the answers in a google doc which I
will share with them.
11. Students will share the document with their other group members.
Closure
12. Come back and have a group discussion to review all the answers to the
questions.
13. Next class we will continue learning about how the CPR impacted Confederation
and those residing in Canada.

Assessment:

Formal assessment of conclusions made about challenges to building the railroad based
on their knowledge of the physical regions of Canada.
Formally assess students answers to the reading guide provided for the CPR story
Formally assess conversation occurring while students are working together in groups to
complete the reading guide.
Lesson Reflection: