New curriculum emphasizes vaccines, climate change

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This article was published 25/10/2024 (317 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — Manitoba is piloting a new science curriculum that mandates lessons on vaccination in Grade 9 and puts Indigenous ways of knowing at the forefront of all classroom labs.

More than 100 teachers across 19 school divisions began testing out renewed lesson plans for kindergarten-to-Grade 10 science this fall.

The updated documents are slated to replace existing ones developed between 1999 and 2003.

Each is guided by five themes: Indigenous people within the natural world, science identity, scientific knowledge, practical science and the nature of science.

“We really want Manitoba students to see themselves as scientists — not the people in white lab coats, always, but to approach our world with curiosity, seeking to understand and seeking to question,” said Janet Tomy, assistant deputy minister of student achievement and inclusion.

Tomy, who said the province is proud of the updates, noted there’s an increased emphasis on Indigenous perspectives and sustainability in the latest editions.

Climate change and the human processes that affect it are now explicitly mentioned in Grade 5, along with water conservation and Indigenous traditional teachings on the resource.

While most existing topics have carried over, from investigating seasonal changes in Grade 1 to the study of plant and animal cells in Grade 8, they are categorized differently.

Teachers have fewer specific outcomes to cover and more flexibility on how-to achieve them, said Greg Johnson, a member of the science curriculum renewal team.

“Core science is core science, but this curriculum is no longer cluster-based. It’s big-idea-based,” Johnson said.

Evolution, a “big idea” that emphasizes change happens over time, is introduced across grades 1, 3, 6, 9 and 10.

All high schoolers will now get a crash course on the history of natural and sexual selection, selective breeding and genetic modification.

Previously, introductory genetics was optional because it is taught in a senior biology course and Manitoba students have the option to discontinue science after Grade 10.

John Wren, president of the Science Teachers Association of Manitoba, called that change “a big step forward,” given genetic engineering is slated to play a major role across society in the coming decades.

“It’s going to be important, from farmers to having a child using IVF (in vitro fertilization), you’re going to start to get asked questions like, ‘Do you want to know what kind of genetics your baby has?’” said the science teacher at Technical Vocational High School.

The new approach is holistic in contrast to the “dry” and “clinical” top-down guidance in documents that preceded it, Wren said.

“It’s pretty exciting, for me, that I get to do things and change things a decade into teaching. I’m excited to shake off some of the weight of that old curriculum,” he said, adding the new one is far more focused on modern-day issues to hook students.

Among the changes, Grade 9 students have to demonstrate an understanding of the nature of adaptation in infectious diseases and related public health measures.

“Include: preventative medicine, mutation, strain, antibiotics, vaccines, antibiotic resistance, waning effectiveness, waning immunity,” states an excerpt of the module.

Vaccines were formerly only included in Grade 11 biology.

» Winnipeg Free Press