Curriculum - French Immersion Program - Grade 12 Global Issues

Course Overview

Citizenship and Sustainability

Education plays a crucial role in motivating and informing both personal and social change. With this in mind, Grade 12 Global Issues: Citizenship and Sustainability is designed to help learners acquire a critical awareness about global issues, to alert them to the need to be vigilant about the consequences of their decisions and actions, and to provide them with opportunities to take action for positive change. This course consolidates learning across the disciplines and helps learners develop competencies as citizens who are mindful of their place in nature and in society and who are willing to work together toward a sustainable future. The pedagogical approach is based on the principles of active democratic citizenship, ecological literacy, critical media literacy, and ethical decision-making. Throughout the course, students examine the social, political, environmental, and economic impact of emerging issues on quality of life—locally, nationally, and globally. They are provided with opportunities to engage in inquiry, active experiential learning, dialogue, collaboration, reflection, and decision-making. With a view to transforming life practices, this course includes the planning and implementation of a school- or community-based action-research project.

Guiding Principles for the Design of Learning Experiences and Assessment Practices

The Guiding Principles of Designing Learning Experiences and Assessment Practices in the French Immersion program provide guidance to all Manitoba educators as they design learning experiences and classroom assessments to strengthen, extend and expand student learning. Planning with the learner, the context, and the curricula in mind creates opportunities for the co-construction of inclusive learning experiences and assessment practices where the diverse learning needs, abilities and interests of each learner are met.

Assessment for and as learning involve learners in the process and support learner reflection; assessment of learning (commonly known as summative evaluation) measures final outcomes. All aspects, when done well, contribute to informed teaching and reliable judgment of learner progress.

The Guiding Principles of Designing Learning Experiences and Assessment Practices outlined below in the French Immersion Program in Manitoba provide guidance to all Manitoba educators as they design learning and assessment experiences to strengthen, extend and expand student learning. Planning with the learner, the context and the curricula in mind creates opportunities for the co-construction of inclusive learning experiences and assessment practices where the diverse learning needs, abilities and interests of each learner are met.

Language is seen as a tool for communication, cognitive development and as a vector for personal and social growth.

The learner develops a sense of belonging to the Francophone community, both within the school and in the Francophone community outside the classroom.

Learning and assessment situations are learner-centred.

Learning and assessment situations take place in a rich and engaging learning environment that offers a climate of trust and respect.

The learning environment and learning and assessment experiences value human diversity.

The learning environment and learning and assessment experiences incorporate Indigenous perspectives and engage the learner in a process of reconciliation

Guiding Principles for Evaluation and Reporting

The Guiding Principles for Evaluation and Reporting are currently still under development and not yet available. When completed, a notification will be added to the Manitoba Framework for Learning “What’s New?” page on the website.

Learning Outcomes

Our ecological footprint is exceeding Earth’s capacity to sustain biodiversity and human life.
Our decisions and actions matter; they have social, environmental, economic, and political consequences.
Individuals, groups, governments, and corporations have the power to effect change and the responsibility to contribute to a sustainable future.
The media do not provide neutral reflections of reality; they affect our decisions and actions.
A global economic system that depends upon and perpetuates unrestrained consumerism is unsustainable.
Economic and technological development have contributed greatly to society, but often with harmful human and environmental consequences.
Indigenous knowledge and world views offer alternatives to prevailing assumptions about how to live with one another within the environment.
Political systems distribute power, privilege, and wealth in different ways, some more justly than others.
A just society respects human diversity and recognizes universal, equal, and inalienable human rights.
There is no them or over there: we all belong to the human species, our concerns are interdependent, and we are part of the natural world.

Specific Learning Outcomes

Through inquiry, learners will research, discuss, and gain knowledge and understanding of a minimum of three (3) of the following Areas of Inquiry (class/student choice): media; consumerism; environment; poverty, wealth, and power; Indigenous peoples; peace and conflict; oppression and genocide; health and biotechnology; gender and identity; social justice and human rights.

Explain why this issue is important.
Explain why we should care.
Describe and analyze how we are affected as a planet, as a nation, and as individuals.
Describe the implications near and far, now and in the future.
Explain how we contribute to the problem.