Poetry & Inquiry - How would you define/describe Canadian Identity?

Grade 6 students were asked to analyze and extract phrases/words from Shane Koyczan's poem "We are More" which was famously performed at the 2010 Winter Olympics. We watched the excerpt from the clip below: (Poem comes in at around 2:15:56)

Big Idea: Canadian Identity has many fundamental elements. Past and present communities have
shaped the development of Canada.

Inquiry question: How do we define Canadian Identity?

Highlighting and extracting phrases...

Students were asked to sort their extraction of ideas into categories....

Students were then to ask to graffiti how they would describe Canadian identity...

Students worked in groups to fill in sentence prompts/ create metaphors to describe Canadian Identity using their own ideas and taking inspiration from Shane Koyczan's poem.


Result.... creative class poem presented that allowed students to see what being Canadian means to us!

It was an engaging lesson where students were able to be creative and express some fundamental elements of Canadian Identity. The goal is to have students revisit our class poem at the end of the unit and see how their learning of Canada's past and present communities have shaped their perspective of Canadian Identity.

Lesson was inspired by TC2 resource