Faced with the lack of textbooks for primary-level geography and history classes, more and more teachers are turning to online resources. Indeed, one can find free on Internet learning situations adapted to the courses of Social universe which include images and videos… Ideal for an interactive whiteboard!
The website Societies and territories, designed by the managers of the RÉCIT local service in the social world, stands out from other sites on the Web by its very comprehensive material. We navigate on a timeline animated with icons. By clicking on one of them, a coureur des bois for example, we discover the context of the time. Lifestyle, population, transport, government, it's all there. The concept is simple: the pages feature primary sources from which students infer key elements of the story, rather than reading works written by historians. “Even in Secondary, where there are many textbooks, there is a lack of source documents,” notes Alexandre Lanoix, one of the designers of Societies and Territories. It is more interesting for the pupil to reconstruct history himself! "
The website is full of how-to videos and pictures that the teacher can present to the class, on a whiteboard or in a lab. For example, maps of seigneuries lead to the question: why are the lands all divided into narrow rectangles? The teacher can write down various hypotheses on the board and leave traces of his analysis on the image. “Our site contains more than 400 files that are easy to modify and free to use,” explains Alexandre Lanoix. We have integrated videos that directly meet the expectations of the ministerial program and help young people to place various notions in time. "
Annie Marois, educational advisor for the Découvreurs school board, recommends the site. “Societies and territories are easy to access; I particularly like its documentary files and the abundance of primary sources. »The site presents diversified material for each cycle. For example, a teacher may choose to present pictures, keywords, and statistics to their Cycle 3 students.
“With all this content, it's tempting to do interactive whiteboard presentations in class,” notes Annie Marois. But the teacher must also have a strategy so that the students keep a written record of their learning. For example, printing the cards presented on the screen allows students to record their own observations on a photo, or the important moments of a video. Otherwise, the exercise is entertaining, but the student cannot revise the content after the activity.
The Societies and Territories site is therefore a real asset for teachers in the Social Universe who use an interactive whiteboard.
Get our Info #DevProf and l'Hebdo so you don't miss out on anything new at École branchée!