There have been some changes to the Socials Curriculum.  To begin, there is no longer a dedicated Socials 11 course.  Instead, after Socials 10, students have a variety of courses to choose from.

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Students can pick any four credit course in Socials, from 20th Century World Studies, Asian History, Philosophy, BC First Peoples, Comparative Civilizations, Human or Physical Geography, Political Studies, Comparative World Religions, Contemporary Indigenous Studies, Economics, Genocide Studies, Law, Social Justice, or Urban Studies.  Students are required to take a Socials course beyond Socials 10, and as you can see they have a large variety to pick from. 

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The curriculum outlines, with elaborations, can be found here.

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Be sure to check out Glen Thielmann's site

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Another great site is Canadian Geographic Education.  It contains dozens of lesson plans that can be used in the new Socials curriculum

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Primary Source Collections

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Also check out VanTech's Library resource page

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Another great site is the new Northern BC Digital Collection

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The Great Canadian Mysteries site is a wonderful place to have students research events, participate in Web quests, and potentially solve mysteries.  Very interactive

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Canadian Pamphlets and Brochures from the University of Toronto-thousands of examples of pre-1930s Canadian primary source brochures and booklets

 

The Evidence Web from the Government of Canada Archives original documents, art, video and audio clips, detailed descriptions and zoom-in capacity, along with links to Web sites and Educational Resources.

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The Canadian Letters and Images Project contains letters, diaries, postcards, and other items connected to Canada and the military

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The CBC Digital Archives has lots of Canadian materials

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Heritage contains almost 40 million pages of primary source Canadian documents

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Glenbow Museum's extensive collection of art, artifacts, archival materials, and published works document the history and culture of Western Canada.

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The Aboriginal Documentary Heritage site includes Dept. of Indian and Northern affairs records, treaties, surrenders, documents relating to Aboriginal soldiers and more.

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The Six Big Ways

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A general, but quite helpful, web site around Historical Thinking concepts can be found here-it includes lessons on how to teach the Six Big Ways of Historical Thinking

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 One of the most important changes has been the focus on the curricular competencies, which remain fairly consistent throughout all the grades in Socials.  In Grade 10, for example, they are listed as:

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• Use Social Studies inquiry processes and skills to ask questions; gather, interpret, and analyze ideas; and communicate findings and decisions

• Assess the significance of people, places, events, or developments, and compare varying perspectives on their significance at particular times and places, and from group to group (significance)

• Assess the justification for competing accounts after investigating points of contention, reliability of sources, and adequacy of evidence (evidence)

• Compare and contrast continuities and changes for different groups during this period (continuity and change)

• Assess how prevailing conditions and the actions of individuals or groups influence events, decisions, or developments (cause and consequence)

• Explain and infer different perspectives on past or present people, places, issues, or events by considering prevailing norms, values, worldviews, and beliefs (perspective)

• Recognize implicit and explicit ethical judgments in a variety of sources (ethical judgment)

• Make reasoned ethical judgments about actions in the past and present, and determine appropriate ways to remember and respond (ethical judgment)

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Each grade contains the underlined sections in the curricular competencies, but at a different skill level depending on the grade.  They are based on the book by Peter Seixtas and Tom Morton, The Six Big Historical Thinking Concepts.  Examples of how these can be used in classrooms can be found here.