Lesson 3
| The Labour Day Critical Design Challenge
46
Learning from Labour |
Intermediate ETFO Resource
|
www.etfo.ca
Task Component
Instruction
Assessment Focus
Look Fors
Notes for Teachers
Share a selection of images found
under ‘Canada Labour Day’. What
do they suggest Canadians have
done historically and currently?
Introduce The Labour Day Critical
Design Challenge to the whole
class.
A critical challenge invites
reasoned judgment and allows
students to select what they think
is the most important criteria from
a range available to them. Students
then shape a response, which
is neither right nor wrong, but
strong or weak depending on their
evidence and explanations.
During
(Working on it)
20 minutes
Organize students into groups of
4-6 participants.
These groups will be known as
the Historical and Current Events
Planning Groups. Groups should
give themselves an appropriate
name.
Examples include Time Travelers
Incorporated or Blast from the
Past Consultants.
Read through the Proposal
Planner section of The Labour Day
Critical Design Challenge.
Individual or pairs of students
within groups may select the
specific topic that interests them,
or chose an additional category,
such as ‘workers’ history’ or the
workers of the historical era
under study, such as Rideau Canal
labourers in the 1830s or railroad
labourers.
Students read the text and decide
on the most significant aspects to
recognize.
Assessment for Learning
Students are assessed to
determine their ability to read
and synthesize the information
and to identify significant people
and events. Critical and creative
thinking are assessed as students
transform the selections from
acknowledgements to action.
While this lesson is presented as
a group activity, a teacher may
choose to make it an individual
task where each student reads all
materials and selects the criteria
for their individual proposal.
A variation on this involves having
student groups focus on only one
of the four elements from the
readings and design a Labour Day
Proposal that is based on that
single aspect.
Teachers may also widen or change
the focus according to interests or
to the historical curriculum focus
under study .
Students will select aspects of
labour to acknowledge, transform
them into action and present
proposals according the criteria
they think are most important.
The range of possible answers are
limited only by the number of
students!