Summary:
This activity has the students explore government responsibilities through the Jurisdictions: Canada game. They then research the current real world politics of council/cabinet responsibilities. Lastly, they’ll be asked to imagine themselves as future government members, what roles they would prefer and why.
Expected Duration: 2 hours (45 minutes of game play, 45 minutes of research, and 30 minutes of writing)
Learning Outcomes:
- recognize municipal, provincial or federal government responsibilities
- research their municipal council, provincial and federal cabinet members, their portfolios and government responsibilities
- create a document that lists the members of the three levels of government for their area
Materials:
- Who’s Who Student Worksheets
Instructions:
Introduce students to the Explore mode of the Jurisdictions: Canada web game. Demonstrate how to change scenes, scroll around and click on objects to learn about them and page through the text information provided in game.
Students should now play through the Jurisdictions: Canada web game. For the most thorough learning have them play though the Explore Mode. If you wish to shorten the play section, you could have them play the Find All mode for only a specific scene instead of all scenes.
After playing through the appropriate game mode, students will then need to research the current governments for their location. Filling in the Who’s Who worksheets they will need to identify the local municipal government and it’s elected members, as well as the date of the last and predicted date of the next election. Then their local provincial or territorial government, including listing its cabinet members and their portfolios and its last and next election date. Then repeat that task for the federal government.
Reflection:
Lastly having reviewed the game and learned all the ways government is impacting their life, as well as reviewing the real world current politics of ministerial duties, students must envision themselves as potential government members. They should identify two positions (mayor/reeve, council member, premier, prime minister or a specific cabinet position in provincial or federal government) that they are most interested in and describe why they would want to serve in that position.
Downloads:
Download this Lesson Plan as a pdf
Download the Student Worksheet as a pdf