Roles in Parliament

On Friday, we began with a necessary discussion on the many different roles in Canadian Parliament. I learned quite a bit too! Students summarized their learnings and we'll have it posted for future reference. Any chance you get to discuss this at home would be helpful as it's a complicated topic.

Next, we went over the 4 typical steps in order to pass a new law: Idea and First Reading of the bill, Second Reading and discussion, Third Reading, and then finally Royal Sanction. In between there's lots of discussing and voting! Students were broken up into teams and given the position either for or against having every Friday be outside fun time all day in Ontario schools. Man is this ever a competitive bunch ;) Everyone jumped right into their roles, coming up with ideas such as "what if the weather is dangerous but you're forced to go outside?" and "exercise outside helps you think more clearly and have more energy!" Students will soon be working on their own "bill" (projet de loi in French), so this was a good warmup. Here are some groups in the First Reading, debating their ideas.