Impressions of Africa

An Introduction to Africa

This week in World Cultures we covered a lot of ground--the students took a vocabulary test and a quiz over Australia and New Zealand, we got into new teams to work on team trivia and "impression gathering," we did some team building, we practiced a new vocabulary strategy called "echo vocabulary," and, finally, learned about the four major regions of Africa. It was definitely a busy week. 

As an introduction to Africa, the students read a children's book about Africa in their teams. Each student wrote their own impression of Africa based on the book, and then they each shared their impressions to come up with a "team impression." 

Here are some things they were looking for in the stories to help them along:

Then the students shared their team impressions with the class and we wrote them on the board:

Then the students answered the following prompt: "If you could write one sentence that describes what children's book authors want to teach children about Africa, what would you write?" They shared their responses on the board:

 Here are some individual impressions of Africa (and the children's books we read):

Janisa: "It's harsh because when people stand up for rights they get beat down."

Da'Monique: "It's hard. African people's lives aren't easy like ours."

Norma: "The authors are trying to teach us that Africans are grateful people that believe and do many cool things."

 

  

Rubi: "My impression is the little kids are working hard to get food to eat and to built shelter to live in."

Sha'Kina: "I think Africa is a hot place because of the clothes they wear."

Molea: "There are many different religions and jungles, forests, plants, trees, and grasslands."

Muler: "Life in Africa is really hard because most people there have to farm to get food and they have to work hard and they are poor."

Isidro: "Africa has many people and stories."


And finally...


As a follow-up assignment, the students took their sentence that summarized all of the stories and narrowed it down to one or two words they could use to describe their impression of Africa. They posted their word on a map of Africa which we will return to at the end of the unit. Hopefully by the end of the unit their impressions will change!


4th period's impressions:

More soon!