Social Studies

In this unit you will travel back in time to 1780 to 1850, when the lands that are now southern Ontario and Quebec were the British colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada. You will learn about the First Nations who lived here long before settlers (such as the Mississauga, Ojibwe, Odawa, Mohawk and Wendat), the Métis communities of the Great Lakes fur trade, and Inuit life in the Arctic. You will meet the settlers who arrived: French habitants, Loyalists, Black Loyalists, freedom seekers who came by the Underground Railroad, and immigrants from England, Scotland and Ireland. You will find out why settlements grew where they did, what daily life was like for men, women and children, how settlement and colonial policies changed the land and affected First Nations, and how treaties, cooperation and conflict shaped relationships. Finally, you will see how these communities helped shape Canada's identity today, and you will become a history detective, using primary sources and oral history to investigate the past.

Every lesson has a hands-on activity to do at home, practice questions and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: A1.1 to A1.4, A2.1 to A2.6 and A3.1 to A3.8 (Ontario Social Studies, Grades 1 to 6, 2018, revised 2023; Grade 3, Strand A: Heritage and Identity: Communities in Canada, 1780–1850). The unit addresses the three overall expectations: comparing ways of life of different groups around 1800 with the present, including the effects of colonial policies and treaties, and how these communities shaped Canadian identity (A1); using the inquiry process to investigate challenges facing different groups and communities and how they responded (A2); and describing First Nations, Métis and settler communities of the period, the factors that shaped settlement, its impact, daily life and roles, and relationships between communities (A3).

In this unit you will explore Ontario, the province we call home. You will find Ontario on the map and learn its neighbours, capital cities and the four Great Lakes along its border. You will sharpen your map skills with grids, scales in kilometres and thematic maps. You will discover Ontario's three landform regions (the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the Canadian Shield and the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence Lowlands) and see how the land shapes land use, natural resources and jobs in different municipal regions. You will learn what municipalities and their councils do, visit First Nations communities in Ontario today, look at how land use affects the environment and what people do to reduce the harm, and finish by investigating land use like a real geographer.

This unit builds on Grade 1 (your local community, land use areas, simple maps) and Grade 2 (globes, continents and directions). Every lesson has a hands-on activity to do at home, practice questions and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: B1, B2, B3 (Ontario Social Studies, Grade 3, People and Environments: Living and Working in Ontario, 2018, revised 2023). B1 (Application): the interrelationship between the natural environment, land use, employment opportunities and the development of municipal regions in Ontario; lessons are also tagged B1.1 (connections between the natural environment and land use or type of community) and B1.2 (connections between the natural environment and employment in two or more municipal regions). B2 (Inquiry): investigating the environmental effects of land and resource use in Ontario municipal regions and measures to reduce negative impact, tagged B2.1 to B2.6 (formulate questions; gather and organize data; analyse and construct maps, including thematic maps; interpret and analyse data; evaluate evidence and draw conclusions; communicate results). B3 (Understanding Context): landform regions, types of land use, natural resources, municipalities and municipal services, and First Nations communities today, tagged with the overall code B3, plus B3.7 (constructing maps of land use, landform regions and municipalities using map elements and standard units).