This activity combines Outdoor Education, Technology, and Geography, History and Citizenship Education. It begins with a walk outdoors identifying and observing characteristics of local trees (note an indoor alternative is provided) and transitions into a historical investigation that builds Competency 2 as students answer the inquiry question, “How did the economy change between 1745 and 1820?”
By linking the physical trees around your school to Napoleon’s blockade and the shift from New France to Lower Canada, students move beyond memorizing dates to mastering the “Establishing Causal Connections” intellectual operation. It offers a seamless blend of outdoor inquiry, critical thinking about historical changes, such as how economic shifts impacted Indigenous-settler relations, and ready-to-use digital resourcesResources are anything taken from the earth or nature that people need, use, and are "valued"..... It’s a turnkey way to help your students interpret how a society’s territoryA territory is an area of land... Un territoire est une zone terrestre ... evolves through its relationship with the land.
ResourcesResources are anything taken from the earth or nature that people need, use, and are "valued"....:
Canva Slide Deck Template Link
Student Tree Identification Table
Teacher Tree Identification Table
Tree Identification Slide Show
Notes on the Creation Process: This activity demonstrates how NotebookLM can be used to generate activities for Geography, History, and Citizenship Education. The slide deck and podcast were created by uploading copyright-free teaching materials to the platform and then requesting an output with a specific prompt focused on economic changes between 1745 and 1820, using student-friendly text and images.
After the slide deck was created in NotebookLM, it was uploaded to a Canva account. From there, I used Canva’s “Magic Layers” tools to piece apart individual elements. This makes the slide deck more accessible since the text is selectable. I changed the fonts, contrast, and removed extra text and images for accessibilityAccessibility refers to access. If something is accessible it means that people have equal access to.... Then I copied the style of the elements in the NotebookLM slides to generate visuals and text for slides 8-10. Then I created a template link so you can automatically be prompted to create a copy in your own Canva Account so you can adjust elements to better suit your students and context.
