Authentic Task: Social Studies 20

This task will be performed across four major units (from January
through April)
o Unit 1: Human Rights
o Unit 2: Population Growth
o Unit 3: Environmental Change
o Unit 4: Wealth and Poverty

Throughout these units we will explore many pertinent issues and

topics:
o acculturation and its impact on Indigenous groups
o prison populations
o sustainability and ecological stewardship
o societal growth
o concepts of well-being
o Aboriginal views of relationships with the land
o and many more.
We will also examine how these four major units are interconnected
while making links to our own local community.
This Authentic Task will be broken into three smaller components.

1)

INDIVIDUAL (Written task):

Students will be either a journalist writing a newspaper column, or a

researcher writing a short research paper.
They may choose a specific topic that interests them from any of the four
chapters, and they must relate it to either social or ecological justice. Topics
should be approved by the teacher before writing.
A sign-up sheet will be posted in the classroom, so as soon as they decide
on their topic and have it approved by the teacher, they may identify it and
the type of justice they will address on the sheet.
(ie: Racism + Social Justice)
Their written paper should be submitted by the end of the unit they chose
the topic from. Thus, it will be a floating due date, depending on their topic
of interest. Further details, rubric, and assessment methods will be coconstructed in class with students.

2)

SMALL GROUPS (Oral-Media task):

Students will form small groups of 3-4 (with the help of the teacher if
necessary). As a group, they will decide on a choice of oral-media (a
PowerPoint presentation, Youtube video, spoken word, music video, etc.)
through which they will deliver a presentation which will celebrate or honour
a particular date of significance on the 2016 calendar. A sign-up sheet will
also be posted with the list of possible days
For example:
Jan.20th Martin Luther King Day
Feb. 20th- World Day of Social Justice
Mar.21st- International Day for Elimination of Racial
Discrimination
Apr.22nd- Earth Day
June 5th- World Environment Day
Their goal is to connect the concepts they have learned from a topic in one
of the units, to one of the dates of significance on the 2016 calendar (ie:
Environmental Stewardship + Earth Day).
There will be a floating deadline for this task, as it should be shared with the
class before or on the day of significance.
Through this part of the task, the teacher should discuss the problems of
only giving one day for acknowledgement of these issues, as they are issues
we should be conscientious of every day.
Students can make use of local community or cultural groups for this task as
well.

3)

WHOLE CLASS (Problem-solving Task):

PREP:
As a class we will be taking a tour of the Saskatoon Correctional
Facility.
In class we will also hear from a guest speaker on social justice issues
(unit 1), and another guest speaker on ecological justice (unit 3), from
our city.
Our goal as a class will be to explore how these two issues are
interrelated.
Students will design a proposal for a garden space to be
constructed for the Correctional Facility.
Following the tour of the Correctional Facility, students will be given ample
class time over the next three weeks to work in their designated subgroups
to collect data, research, design, and collaborate in meetings. The following
week they will cohesively synthesize their findings, and construct their final
presentation proposal(s), with the final presentation of their proposal plan
being on May 24th.
As a group, students will negotiate what tasks and subgroups need to be
formed in order to create a persuasive proposal that may be reviewed by
the Board of Corrections, the municipal city council, Public Health, and any
other stakeholders involved with the decision making process for the Facility.
They will need researchers: to investigate and find evidence as to why
a garden would benefit prisoners? What our prison population stats are
and why? How does this serve the environment/our city? What impact
might it have on well-being? And our social justice system? How does
this pertain to human rights/sustainability/stewardship? Can the result
impact poverty or give back to society or save the Facility money?
Who would tend to the garden?
They will need designers of the garden: where should it be located
assess Facility blueprints? How big? What should be planted? Native
species? Consider the land you wish to construct it on and why? For
this aspect, we will be collaborating with grade 11 Ecology or
Environmental Science students.
They will need a secretary, a chairperson, and writers: to put the final
proposal together.
They will need presenters: to create a presentation board. Perhaps
they can choose to divide into smaller sub-groups based on specific

topics, and each subgroup creates a collaborative presentation board.

Students can choose the layout of this process through Socratic
dialogue and discussion.

The school will be celebrating World Environment Day (June 5 th), on Friday
June 3rd.
We will set up booths in a museum walk, which will take place in the
gymnasium from 10 am to 12pm.
Other classes will also be presenting projects they have worked on
over the term.
This event will be open to parents and the public. Students will form in
their oral media groups with an electronic device playing their recorded
clip in the background.
Students will individually wear a name tag with their essay topic
identified on it (ie: Racism + Social Justice) and will be prepared to
engage people with a 2 minute summary of their topic of interest, and
what they found.
The teacher will float around to each of the students, assessing their
quick-pro-quo presentations.
For all three components of the Authentic Task, students will have many
opportunities to get formative feedback on their projects. We will negotiate
the marking rubrics for each part of the tasks in class and correlate them
with the learning outcomes for this course. For now, they should know that
they will be evaluated based on:

Their ability to use dialectical thinking

Their ability to understand the process of decision making
Their ability to utilize the process of problem solving
Their conflict resolutions skills
To what degree they relate content material to their authentic task
projects
Critical thinking
Creativity