I decided to explore the differences between Saskatchewan curriculum and the Alberta curriculum. In particular, I looked at the differences between Saskatchewan’s History 10 curriculum guide and Alberta’s Social Studies. As we begin, we know that Saskatchewan’s curriculum guide for history has not been updated for many years, twenty-eight in fact. I will further explore the two curriculums, one at a time, before finishing with what curriculum I prefer.
The Saskatchewan curriculum is, as mentioned, quite outdated. Despite this, the curriculum contains an overview of the curricula, including teaching skills and abilities developed towards this curriculum, controversial issues, evaluation, unit and lesson plans to name a few. The layout is easy to navigate which is good since the curriculum is almost three-hundred pages. The curriculum describes the ability to teach students the curriculum in a way that leads to them achieving the objectives of higher order thinking. There are knowledge objectives, skills & abilities objectives and value objectives. There are five main concepts of the course which include: interdependence, social institution, decision-making, power, and ideology. There are actually a lot of resources included, such as adaptions to assessment and evaluations, unit and lesson plans and other resources that might be a bit outdated but probably still useful.
The way that social studies has been divvied up in Alberta is slightly confusing to me. It is interesting to see how it works in another province, especially since the order of it goes Social Studies 10-1, Social Studies 10-2 and Social Studies 10-4. It is obvious that each of these courses is provided with many outcomes that relate to critical thinking and understanding of the world around us. Gives examples of varying ways to assess students and an emphasis on differentiated learning, just as the old Saskatchewan curriculum attempts as well. Not only does the Alberta curriculum provide resources for teachers (digital and print sources) but it also provides resources for students and their parents in order to achieve and understand the outcomes from home. Something that will work great in times such as these.
After looking over the two curriculums, I decided that I enjoyed Saskatchewan’s curriculum the best. The reason for this being the familiarity of the curriculum, along with a better understanding of how courses in Saskatchewan work. While the history and social studies curriculum needs updating in this province there are definitely many resources that you can find in order to update the curriculum to twenty-first century standards.
Emma's Teaching Corner 