Canadian History in the Twentieth Century

Prior Knowledge Required

• 
  the creation of the United Nations covered in Unit 2
  

Teaching/Learning Strategies

2. Students determine if Canada should continue peacekeeping missions by evaluating the overall success or failure of Canada’s peacekeeping efforts. Students are jigsawed into four groups who examine articles and pictures of the following missions: Somalia, Rwanda, Croatia, Kosovo. The groups become familiar with the causes, events, and results of these missions. Students form new groups with a representative from the four missions and each person provides a brief summary of the mission. The group then discusses if, based on these missions, Canada should continue participating in such missions. The group writes its opinion on chart paper and includes point-form points to support its opinion. One member of each group presents the group’s decision.

3. Having seen the difficulties that our troops face in many peacekeeping missions, students now are given an opportunity to communicate with our troops by writing our forces presently involved in many foreign missions. The teacher may obtain the address of Canadian forces in peacekeeping missions and have the students write a letter to UN Canadian forces overseas to thank them for their efforts. Students write a draft of their letter that should include a brief background to the mission and students’ comprehension of the mission, an evaluation of the mission with a request that the soldiers respond or react to that evaluation and a positive personal message. This letter could be assessed using a simplified rubric (Appendix 5.4.1).

4. To lead into the last section of this activity the teacher asks students: Who makes decisions about sending Canadians on United Nation’s missions? (PM and parliament). The teacher should elicit from students the other roles played by prime ministers besides ordering Canadian forces to participate in United Nations’ missions. The teacher mentions to students that the prime minister plays an essential role in government. In the time period of this unit there have been two main prime ministers. The teacher asks students to identify these two. Begin by having students identify the present prime minister. The teacher should mention that both these prime ministers won back-to-back majority governments. Brainstorm with the class why they think these prime ministers were so successful. This is an indirect way of having students list the qualities they believe a successful prime minister should have. Examine the headlines from these elections and note how accurate the students’ suggestions were and have them list issues that were prominent during these elections (Appendix 5.4.2).

5. Students are told that they will be “interviewing” the two prime ministers in order to determine which was the better prime minister in the last decades of the twentieth century. The class is divided in half. One group prepares the questions for Chretien and the other speaks to Mulroney. Two students are selected to play the prime ministers. They review the achievements of the two men from their textbook, consultations with parents/guardians, and the teacher. The rest of the class works on developing general questions that attempt to elicit the main achievements of both men. The questioners take this information and the opinions of two sources from the community (parents/guardians, teachers, friends) and decide who was the better prime minister. Students write their opinion in a proper paragraph format: an introductory/topic sentence, three or four support sentences, and a concluding sentence. Paragraphs are evaluated for clarity of expression, depth of arguments, and proper spelling and grammar.