Social Studies 2 to 3
Politics and Law

Prescribed Learning Outcomes

It is expected that students will:

• explain their roles, rights, and responsibilities within the community
• describe functions of local governments
• explain the significance of Canada's symbols

To view the prescribed learning outcomes for Politics and Law in other grades click on an icon below.

• Ask students to develop definitions for roles, rights, and responsibilities. Then have them interview community members to determine the community perspective on what students' roles, rights, and responsibilities should be. As a class, discuss whether these perspectives are fair, accurate, and appropriate.
• Challenge students to search local newspapers for headlines and captions that focus on responsible and irresponsible behaviour within the community (e.g., fundraising versus stealing). Have students work in groups to sort and classify these examples as being responsible or irresponsible and to justify their classifications.
• Invite representatives from local governments to talk about their roles and responsibilities within a political structure. Beforehand, have students prepare relevant questions. Alternatively, ask students to create a questionnaire and use it to interview local politicians or Aboriginal elders about their roles and responsibilities.
• Ask the class to conduct research and develop a schematic that shows the structure of a local government (e.g., city or town council, chief and council of a First Nations community).
• Have students develop posters or books that teach others about a particular role within a local government. They can then display their posters and books and share them with another class.
• Through discussion and research, encourage students to examine the origin of Canada's symbols (e.g., the maple leaf, the RCMP, the Bluenose, the beaver). Challenge them to each develop a new symbol that could represent Canada and to explain their reasons.

Suggested Assessment Strategies

• When students discuss and work with the concepts of roles, rights, and responsibilities, look for evidence that they:
  • recognize that they have rights and responsibilities
  • demonstrate rights and responsibilities as they work with others
  • are able to identify the roles, rights, and responsibilities of others
• Ask students to each choose one role, one right, and one responsibility and to draw themselves demonstrating each of these in the classroom. Have them label their drawings. Collect students' drawings and look for evidence that they are able to accurately explain their roles, rights, and responsibilities.
• After students conduct research and represent the structure of a local government, look for evidence that they:
  • accurately describe the functions of local government
  • identify roles within local government
• When students examine the origin of Canada's symbols and develop their own symbols that represent Canada, have them review and assess their work. Use sentence stems such as:
  • On my Canadian symbol, I like the way I ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ .
  • Three connections I made between the Canadian symbols we learned about and my own Canadian symbol are‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚.
  • My symbol could be important as a Canadian symbol because ‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ .
  • I could make my symbol even more important as a Canadian symbol by‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚‚ .