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: 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:
- 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, 12180 Minutes
Students confront the human impacts of uprooting, internment, dispossession, displacement, and deportation. The federal government sold Japanese Canadians’ homes, businesses, and personal property and forced families to use the proceeds to support themselves during the internment.
- Big Ideas:
- Internment
- Subject:
- Social Studies, Social Justice
- Lesson Components:
- 7
- 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, 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