Learning Activity Three: Africa
Through Art & Literature
The purpose of this activity is for students to explore
different elements of Africa through art and literature.
1. Have students freewrite a response in their journals (or a
separate piece of paper) about the following questions:
Why is the land and nature a common subject of poetry
and art?
What do these and related forms of artistic expression
tell us about ourselves and our relationship to the
earth and one another?
Divide the class into pairs and share responses. Use these
responses as the basis for a whole class discussion.
Ask students to write to the poet a letter in which they
respond to the poet¹s stance toward ³foreign aid.²
3. Discuss the following with your students: War is often
the result of acute scarcity of the most fundamental and
essential commodities, such as food and water. Ask the
students to think of examples throughout history when this
has occurred.
4. Send students to the PBS AFRICA site to view a
photo essay about war in Africa.
http:// www.pbs.org/ africa/photoscope Click on the
"Conflict" menu item in this section
5. View the photo collection of Sergio Joao Francisco
da Silva, a Mozambican who, from 1987 to 1994, worked for
Norwegian Save the Children as a photographer documenting
the crisis of the war in central Mozambique at
http://www.piac.org/ childseye/sergio/ index.htm Make sure
that students click on the thumbnails to view the full image
(the gallery presents cropped snap-shots of full images).
Ask the students to write a poem focusing upon the concrete
images revealed through da Silva¹s photography.
In this activity, students should critically examine how the
media portrays issues regarding Africa, and how people can
effect social change through activism.
1. Lead a class discussion focusing on the process of
activism and social change.
Some possible questions to consider include:
What provokes activism? What sustains it?
How does activism often relate to economics and the
distribution of resources?
Why are these environmental issues confronting Africa
important to us?
3. In small groups, research ways in which people and
organizations can make a positive difference regarding these
global matters. Have each group share its ideas with the
whole class.
4. Have students discuss the subject of the news media
itself.
Some questions to consider include:
Who decides what is ³newsworthy²?
How does this decision influence our attitudes about
the world and its people?
How does this decision influence foreign policies?
5. Ask the students to write a letter to a fifth-grade
student in which they describe an example of the kind of
specific social action a person can take that can potentially
make a difference in the world. Have the students focus their
appeal around the kinds of environmental activism that is
desperately needed in Africa. Explain that students need to
keep their writing clear and simple, since it is to be read
by fifth graders. Follow this up by a short discussion of
why students are writing to fifth graders as an exercise for
keeping their writing short and clear, since this style is
the basis of news writing.
In this activity, students will draw upon what they have
learned throughout these lessons to create a coherent
portrait of the issues of desertification and clean water in
Africa.
1. As a culminating activity, have the entire class create a
script for an imaginary newscast detailing the problem of
desertification and water scarcity in Africa.
2. Break students into groups to work on different segments
of the news story in which they address several facets of the
problem from the perspective of various news departments.
These departments or ³bureaus² should include the following:
The Science Correspondent:This group should focus on the
geographic, meteorological, and other human factors
producing desertification. Graphics illustrating the
problem should be included.
The Community Correspondent:This group should focus on
the personal or human costs of desertification and water
scarcity. Further Internet research may be helpful.
The Economic Correspondent:This group should focus on the
impacts of desertification upon the local and national
economies of Africa as well as the global economy.
The Political Correspondent:This group should focus on
the various political tensions created and exacerbated by
these problems.
The Production Group: This group is responsible for
integrating all the parts of the script, and directing and
videotaping, or recording of the final production.
The Set Designers: This group is responsible for designing
the set, and obtaining appropriate staging props.
The Expert Panel: This group should be convened at the end of the newscast. Their task is to suggest possible
solutions to these problems.
Learning Activity Three: Africa
Through Art & Literature
Why is the land and nature a common subject of poetry
and art?
