Rural Living Then and Now

Grade 9 - Geography Academic
Grade 10 - History Applied

Purpose

Taking on the persona of an elderly Canadian farmer, create a photographic timeline and letter that is to be sent to a young relative.

Your timeline and letter will contain a minimum of 6 specific events or situations that will detail important concepts, events, and areas of your life ranging from the early 1900’s through the late 1980’s. You will use these events to describe the changes that have occurred, discussing whether, overall , life for a Canadian farmer has gotten better or worse during your lifetime.

Overview

For this assignment the students will be using photographs from the Archives of Ontario website in order to decide if the life of Canadian farmers has gotten better or worse over the 20th Century. Each student will take on the persona of an elderly farmer (male or female) who is writing about their life to a young relative. They will describe, with the help of the pictures, at least 6 key moments of their life and will describe their importance. This photographic timeline will have a minimum of 6 carefully selected pictures in it. For each picture they will write a 2-3 sentence caption describing what is happening in the picture along with its importance. In addition to this, the students will write a letter to a young relative (grandson/daughter young niece/nephew) describing the changes in farming over their lifetime. This letter will be a minimum of 1 page long and will use the specific examples in the photographs to describe whether farming as a profession has gotten better or worse from the early 1900’s through the late 1980’s.

Lesson Plan Created by: Colin Parker