Search for lessons using the filters for Big Idea, Subject Area, Grade, Lesson Type, or Language.
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Grades: 5, 6, 7, 8, 910 Classes
During the 1940s, Canada displaced and dispossessed thousands of Japanese Canadians on racial grounds. They lost their homes, farms, and businesses, as well as personal, family, and communal possessions. This lesson plan uses the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians as a way to help students learn about the world by seeking answers to big questions about fairness, community, home and belonging.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Social Justice, Law
- Lesson Components:
- 9
- Languages:
- English
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Grades: 9, 104 Classes
Designed in collaboration with the City of Richmond Archives as part of a Community Field Experience project, this resource focuses on the treatment of Japanese Canadians before, during, and after World War II. Copies and re-creations of archival records, along with materials designed specifically for classroom use, work together to illustrate the experiences of Japanese Canadians in Steveston, allowing students to explore the topic of Japanese Canadian internment in a local context.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Social Justice, Law
- Lesson Components:
- 2
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12Optional
This lesson illuminates some of the ways in which Japanese Canadians resisted systemic racism in the form of incarceration, internment, uprooting, loss of home and property, and numerous other injustices, during and after World War II. The lesson package provides background information to prepare teachers before discussing with students the Canadian government’s incarceration of Japanese Canadians.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Language Arts, Social Justice
- Lesson Components:
- 11
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 10, 11, 12180 minutes
In this series of lessons, students explore the impact of internment on the lives of Japanese Canadians through the lens of Japanese Canadian high school graduates. Students examine school yearbooks from 1941 through 1943, select a graduate to research, and then explore the impacts of forced removal, internment, loss of homes and businesses, resettlement, and expulsion.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Social Justice
- Lesson Components:
- 9
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 8, 9, 10, 11, 121 Term
What compels immigrants to lay down their lives for an adopted country? This lesson introduces students to the concept of maltreatment and unequal rights, and provides them with an understanding of the importance of the franchise and the variety of factors that influenced first-generation Japanese Canadians, leading to more than 200 of them enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Components:
- 3
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 10, 11, 12120 Minutes
What factors compel people to emigrate/immigrate? This lesson introduces students to the concept of migration and the variety of factors (push-pull factors) that influence emigration in general and influenced Japanese Canadians specifically.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Components:
- 3
- Languages:
- English
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Grades: 4, 5, 6, 7Optional
Full Moon Lagoon is a middle-grade novel by Monica Nawrocki, set on Cortes Island on British Columbia’s west coast . A rich narrative that intertwines elements of adventure, time travel, and historical significance sees the three young protagonists transported back in time and finding themselves responsible for warning a Japanese Canadian family about the challenges they will face after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Language Arts
- Lesson Components:
- 5
- Languages:
- French, English
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Grades: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 126 Lessons
Students learn that in 1942, when Canada was at war with Japan, the Canadian government declared all Japanese Canadians, many of whom were either loyal British subjects or born in Canada, “enemy aliens.” The BC government then removed 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes and from the province’s west coast. But students also learn, through the Kozuki family story, about the incredible strength, resilience, and fortitude of Japanese Canadians as they recovered their lives, homes, and businesses.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Components:
- 7
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 10, 11, 12240 Minutes
Students investigate the change in government policy from custodial trusteeship to forced sale of Japanese Canadians’ property, a change that came as a shock to most Japanese Canadians at the time and created immense hardships and legacies that have continued to the present day.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Law
- Lesson Components:
- 6
- Languages:
- English
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Grades: 10, 11, 12120 Minutes
Students explore how perceptions shaped by popular media can influence public opinion. They then examine the complex factors that led to the uprooting and internment of Japanese Canadians in the spring of 1942.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Components:
- 3
- Languages:
- English
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Grades: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9120 Minutes
While Japanese Canadian stories often focus on internment narratives, Empire of the Son, by Tetsuro Shigematsu, highlights the Shigematsu family’s post-internment immigration from Japan to Canada via England. Showcasing the diversity within the Japanese Canadian community, the play explores intergenerational conflict, reconciliation, and the complexities of father-son relationships within the immigrant experience.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Drama, Language Arts
- Lesson Components:
- 2
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 10, 11, 12180 Minutes
One of the most common primary sources is the photograph. It is among the first representations of a topic that students find when they conduct an online search. Many photos of the Japanese-Canadian internment camps show smiling faces. These lessons give students the context and tools with which to understand the social and cultural contexts behind those smiles and to better understand the realities of internment and the unjust actions of the federal government in the 1940’s.
- Big Ideas:
- Different Perspectives & Ideas
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Language Arts
- Lesson Components:
- 9
- Languages:
- French, English
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Grades: 10, 11, 125 Classes
Created for the BC Ministry of Education’s Socials Studies 10 curriculum, this five-lesson set based on the Nikkei Centre’s publication Karizumai: A Guide to Japanese Internment Sites is intended to help students understand the Japanese Canadian experience before, during, and after World War II, to ensure that the injustices done to Japanese Canadians will not be repeated.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Social Justice
- Lesson Components:
- 5
- Languages:
- English, French
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Grades: 5, 6, 7, 8, 960 Minutes
Racism can permeate all elements of society. We are most familiar with the institutional, systemic, and societal forms of racism, particularly when we are looking at the past. But geography and spaces can also be impacted by racism. Looking at Vancouver’s Powell Street neighbourhood, students explore the ways in which racism impacts home, neighbourhood, and community.
- Big Ideas:
- Historical & Contemporary Injustices
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Components:
- 5
- Languages:
- English, French