Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute
Upper Grand District School Board
Course Outline
Department: Business
Course Title:
Understanding Canadian Law in Everyday
Life
Course Type: Workplace Preparation
Grade: 11
Course Code: CLU3E
Credit Value: 1
Department Head: Stephen Fleming
Teachers: David Fast
Teacher email: (not mandatory)
Date of Development: October 1, 2015
Curriculum Document:
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/sec
ondary/2015CWS11and12.pdf
Course Prerequisites/Corequisites:
Canadian History since World War I, Grade
10, Academic or Applied, or the locally
developed compulsory course (LDCC) in
Canadian history
Course Description:
This course enables students to develop a practical understanding of laws that affect the
everyday lives of people in Canada, including their own lives. Students will gain an
understanding of the need for laws, and of their rights, freedoms, and responsibilities under
Canadian law. Topics include laws relating to marriage, the workplace, cyberbullying, and
criminal offences. Students will begin to develop legal reasoning skills and will apply the
concepts of legal thinking and the legal studies inquiry process when investigating legal
issues that are relevant to life in Canada today.
Term Work (70% of the final mark)
Unit Title, Big Ideas, and Unit Culminating Tasks
Legal Foundations: Law is based on principles derived from society’s beliefs about what is
fair and just. Law changes over time in response to a variety of factors, including what society
values and believes in, technological advances, and political trends.
Rights and Freedoms: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms reflects Canadian
human rights principles. The belief in the protection and promotion of human rights in Canada
and the world has developed gradually through the efforts of individuals and groups.
Civil Law: Negligence is the most common area of tort law and deals with cases where harm
is caused by carelessness rather than the intention to do harm. Family law exists to protect
all members in domestic relationships, even when the relationships end. Employment law
attempts to balance the rights of business owners and workers. Contract law outlines
voluntary legal obligations between two people or two groups.
Criminal Law: The punishment of criminals is a distinct part of criminal law. The rules
governing the criminal trial process represent an attempt to balance the rights of the accused
and the rights of the victim and society. Precedent-setting legal cases, technological
advances, and societal trends cause changes in Canadian criminal law and the criminal
justice system.
Culminating Tasks/Exams (30% or the final mark)
Course Culminating Task/Exams and Description
News project, Final exam.
Based on the range of students’ learning needs, a selection from the strategies listed below may be
utilized. Refer to list of teaching and assessment strategies.
Teaching Strategies:
This course provides differentiated learning for its students by implementing the following
teaching and learning strategies:
 Activity-based Strategies: Oral presentations, panel discussion, and repetition and
practice.
 Direct Instruction Strategies: Cloze, demonstration, guided writing, lecturer, mnemonic
devices, practice and drill, prompting, review, visual stimuli, and Socratic dialogue.
 Independent Learning Strategies: Homework, independent reading, independent
study, learning log, memorization, portfolio, reflection, report writing, and response
journals.
 Inquiry and Research Model Strategies: Inquiry process, questioning process,
research process, writing process.
 Learning skills accommodation: Interpersonal intelligence, intra-personal intelligence,
logical-mathematical intelligence, verbal-linguistic intelligence, and visual spatial
intelligence.
 Thinking Skills Strategies: Case study, classifying, concepts verification, concept
mapping, expressing another point of view, issue-based analysis, lateral thinking,
media analysis, meta-cognitive reflection, oral explanation, problem posing, problemsolving, and writing to learn.
Assessment and evaluation strategies:
Our theory of assessment and evaluation follows the Ministry of Education's Growing Success
document, and it is our firm belief that doing so is in the best interests of students. We seek to
design assessment in such a way as to make it possible to gather and show evidence of
learning in a variety of ways to gradually release responsibility to the students, and to give
multiple and varied opportunities to reflect on learning and receive detailed feedback.
Growing Success articulates the vision the Ministry has for the purpose and structure of
assessment and evaluation techniques. There are seven fundamental principles that ensure
best practices and procedures of assessment and evaluation by Virtual High School teachers.
VHS assessments and evaluations,
 are fair, transparent, and equitable for all students;
 support all students, including those with special education needs, those who are
learning the language of instruction (English or French), and those who are First
Nation, Métis, or Inuit;
 are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and,
as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and
experiences of all students;
 are communicated clearly to students and parents at the beginning of the course and
at other points throughout the school year or course;
 are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide
multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning;
 provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to
support improved learning and achievement;
 develop students’ self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning,
set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning.
Textbooks/Learning Resource Materials (align with Policy 603)
Law in Action ISBN: 0-13-040592-2
Fees for Learning Materials/Activities
Learning Materials/Activities
Field trip to Guelph Criminal Court
Cost
$0
Please refer to the GCVI Student Handbook for our school policies on:
● academic integrity
● late and missed assignments