BC – Social Studies 5 Alignment Guide

The Switch Classroom BC Social Studies 5 curriculum alignment guide provides teachers with a clear way to connect lessons to provincial standards while engaging students with real-world energy topics. Each activity is mapped to competencies such as questioning and predicting, processing and analyzing data, planning and conducting, applying and innovating, evaluating, and communicating. This ensures classroom instruction supports both skills practice and curriculum outcomes.

The guide highlights how Switch Classroom lessons address science content areas such as energy transfer and conservation, electricity, and environmental impact, as well as social studies standards on human–environment interactions, resource development, and decision-making.

Featured lessons include Introduction to Natural Gas, where students use a video, quiz, and data set to learn about natural gas and its challenges, followed by the Science of Natural Gas lab to model production methods. In Introduction to Hydropower, students explore vocabulary and complete a hands-on group activity, while Switch On: Hydropower in Africa takes them on a virtual case study of the GERD in Ethiopia. Additional activities include data analysis on coal emissions and a video lesson on coal’s role as an energy source.

With the BC Social Studies 5 curriculum alignment guide, teachers can integrate Switch Classroom lessons into standards-based instruction with confidence.

• Social Studies Big Ideas: Natural resources continue to shape the economy and identity of different regions of Canada.
• Social Studies Content:
  • Resources and economic development in different regions of Canada
  • Energy resources (e.g., natural gas, petroleum, coal, hydro)
  • What natural resources are most important to the economy of your community?
  • How has technology affected the discovery, extraction, processing, and marketing of selected natural resources?