Statistics Canada's Learning resources
Annual journal 2009/2010

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Teachers

Just for you–everything from Statistics Canada that's most relevant to your students!

Resources by school subject:

Each subject page is divided into three tabs:

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History

Canada Year Book Historical Collection, 1867-1967

With this stunning online collection of original Canada Year Books, students can research everyday issues that affected Canadians throughout the last century—such as employment opportunities, cost of living, immigration, urbanization or family structure.

The accompanying 20 lessons, for intermediate and secondary students, were developed by Ellie Deir, Carol White and Gord Sly of Queen's University's Faculty of Education. Aiming to make history interesting for young people, the authors asked themselves: "Where were the farmers and beauticians, the shopkeepers and soldiers among all the numbers? How can we encourage students and teachers to engage in ‘active learning'?"

Here are some examples of lessons from the collection's Teachers' tool box:

• The Great Depression: Students role-play a 1936 family from a particular community, find data on household income and expenses and develop a family budget. (secondary)
• Immigration and emigration: Students study the impact of immigration on population growth, discover where immigrants settled in Canada and consider ‘push' and ‘pull' factors that influenced their migration. (intermediate)
• Canada at war: Students investigate the actual costs, both human and monetary, of both world wars and reflect on honouring those who contributed to Canada's war efforts. (intermediate)
• Changing families and households: Students research the effect of industrialization on family structures, comparing different parts of Canada and different time periods. (secondary)

Key resources

Short animations bring history to life:

• Seven vignettes relate settlement history to the patterns of today's population distribution in different regions of Canada.
• Time line of the Canadian centenarians, 1901 to 2006 recalls major 20^th Century events.
• 100 years of immigration shows the different countries of origin of immigrants to Canada.
• Census families, 1921 to 2006 reviews social changes that affected family structures.

Collections:

• Censuses of Canada, 1665 to 1871 offers descriptions of the population, dating from first contacts with aboriginal peoples and early French and English settlements, through to the 1800s.

Lessons

For elementary and intermediate students:

• Virtual winter count: Like the North American Plains Indians, students record their history using pictures and stories.
• Role playing Jean Talon: Students review 1665-1666 census data collected by Jean Talon and try to convince the King of France to increase investment in New France.

Find more at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > Teachers > History

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Geography

Find valuable resources to support the Geography of Canada curriculum: great maps and mapping tools, animations, articles, lessons, interactive databases. Below are just a few examples:

Key resources

Animations: Population pyramids

Watch the age structure of Canada's population evolve throughout the 20^th century and spot the post-war ‘baby boom' and the more recent ‘boom echo'. The shape of an age pyramid reveals a story: Nunavut's exploding youth population or the exodus of young adults from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Articles: Canada Year Book

Each year, the Canada Year Book reviews current life in Canada, with short, easy-to-read articles on major trends in:

• agriculture
• population and demography
• ethnic diversity and immigration
• international trade
• environment
• and many other topics...

Lessons

• Urban and rural communities: Students compare distinguishing features of urban and rural communities, using census data from Community Profiles. (elementary)
• Canada and its trading partners: Students investigate the importance of international trade—and of trade with the United States in particular—using data in E-STAT. (intermediate and secondary)

Data

Community Profiles

Research any community in Canada. Find tables and graphs on population, age groups, labour, income, and much more. Compare data between locations. Create a thematic map. For major cities, locate neighbourhood-like areas in the related Census Tract Profiles.

Find more at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > Teachers > Geography

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Business Studies—Hot new lesson!

The lesson "Identifying potential target markets" has students create market profiles for two communities in their region to discover the best location for a fictitious business, using Community Profiles.

Find more at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > Teachers > Business Studies and Economics

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Mathematics

Here's just a taste of the treasure-trove of Mathematics resources waiting for you:

Investigating social justice issues

As they mature, students develop their personal principles with respect to social justice, equity and human rights. According to Geoffrey Roulet, Mathematics Education Professor at Queen's University, "The mathematics classroom can and should serve as a place for students to struggle with these ideas. The students' emerging concerns and opinions are a source of debates that require data analysis for solutions and thus, that support mathematics."

Intermediate and early high school students view social justice issues in terms of their own lives, preferring to investigate data of a local or personal nature. For example, students participating in the Census at School survey can examine their class data on environmental behaviours, like recycling and composting, as a springboard to taking action.

Senior students are able to address broader issues, applying statistical analysis techniques to questions that are meaningful to them, such as:

• Are particular diseases more prevalent in some geographic areas than others? How does access to health services compare between different groups?
• How do average earnings compare between industries, between regions, or between men and women?

Census at School
international online survey

Elementary students have fun while learning about surveys, data management and analysis. Using their own collected data, they create frequency tables and different types of graphs; calculate mean, mode and median; investigate hypotheses; and make comparisons with Canadian results. Secondary students create scatter graphs, make correlations and obtain random samples from the international database to study the effects of sample size. Visit www.censusatschool.ca.

Find more at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > Teachers > Mathematics

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E-STAT

E-STAT—Search, create, analyse!

With the E-STAT database tool, you can investigate and dynamically display statistics about Canada and its people. From a chosen dataset, choose the geographic region, characteristics and time period you need to create your own unique output: a table, map or graph.

The CANSIM socio-economic database lets you track trends over several years of phenomena such as prices, divorce rates, immigration, and much more.

     

Censuses shed light on the population in a particular census year. Investigate 2006 Census characteristics—such as family type, income, immigrant status and many more—for geographic levels that go from province and region to municipality and neighbourhood-like areas called ‘Census Tracts'.

     

 

Help is close by
Check the User guides and lesson plans to make the most of this powerful tool. Any questions? Click on Contact E-STAT.

"E-STAT gives students access to a phenomenal amount of information in all the social science fields... and lets them work with real world data."
— Renaud Bouret, quantitative methods teacher (CÉGEP / Grade 12), Gatineau, Quebec

Find more at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > E-STAT

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Encourage critical thinking

To study social and economic conditions in Canada, try the 2006 Census Results Teachers' Kit, written by The Critical Thinking Consortium. Students in grades 7 to 12 practice their analytical skills while studying information from the 2006 Census. They use criteria for judgment and thinking strategies that are provided in each lesson.

• Population change: Students consider the types of migration that contribute to population change and then they rank the economic, social and environmental effects of migration.
• Immigration: After studying the pull and push factors affecting current immigration, students recommend ideal destinations in Canada for two hypothetical immigrants.
• Aboriginal peoples: Students create population pyramids of Canada's Aboriginal and Non- Aboriginal populations and consider the needs of a young and growing population.
• Work, employment and education: Students examine changing labour market conditions, identify challenges and opportunities, and then assess government plans to address them.

These four other lessons complete the Teacher's Kit:

• Aging population
• Families
• Earnings and incomes
• Ethnic origins and visible minorities

Find it at www.statcan.gc.ca/learningresources > Teachers > Quick links > Census of Canada resources > Lessons

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Teachers: Need help?

Contact Education Services nearest you to request:

• conference presenters and workshop trainers
• help in finding relevant StatCan information for your courses
• copies of this flyer and other materials
• assistance with developing curriculum and textbook content.

Western provinces and Territories
Marion Smith, Vancouver
marion.smith@statcan.gc.ca
604-666-1148

Ontario
Sandra McIntyre, Toronto
sandra.mcintyre@statcan.gc.ca
416-973-9847

Ontario
Yves Saint-Pierre, Ottawa
yves.saint- pierre@statcan.gc.ca
613-951-2858

Quebec and Eastern provinces
Gwenaël Cartier, Montreal
gwenael.cartier@statcan.gc.ca
514-496-8429

We appreciate your feedback

• send us comments, student projects and lessons to share
• tell us about an upcoming conference
• inform your colleagues about us.

Toll-free telephone inquiries: 1-800-263-1136 (Ottawa)
Students can also contact infostats@statcan.gc.ca

For technical help

E-STAT: E-mail e-stat@statcan.gc.ca
or call toll-free 1-800-465-1222

Census at School: E-mail sos@statcan.gc.ca
or call toll-free 1-877-949-9492
(8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time)