Please download the complete lesson plan for the worksheets, resources and rubrics. Below is an overview of the lesson plan.

Lesson Objectives

Students will:

Identify & explain patterns in human geography and describe how human activities are affected by these patterns
Demonstrate an understanding of employment patterns & trends
Use a variety of geographic representations, tools, and technologies to gather, process, and communicate geographic information

Learn about the characteristics of developed and developing countries that make up the continent of Africa.
Learn to identify the patterns in human geography and will relate those patterns to countries visited during the Africa Expedition: Small World Big Picture.
Learn that the countries in Africa differ in many ways. Through discussion with other students and people who live in Africa, students will learn about the population issues and characteristics of individual African countries.
Learn, from first-hand information, that population trends in African countries are affected by environmental factors.

Motivation

Kick-off of the Africa Expedition and tracking of Ben throughout his expedition.

videos from the Expedition Team and African people
images/pictures from urban/rural communities, African cities
The Expedition Africa website
Maps of Africa
Access to Internet
Books about Africa
Population stats
Access to PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel
Atlas (one for each student/pair)
Information about the Nine Expedition Africa countries from the CIDA website. Please consult the Online Resources section for a complete list.
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and CIA – World Fact Book website

Lesson 1 and 2: Introduction to African Expedition (kick-off/hook)

introduction to the entire expedition and mapping of the expedition
discussion about Africa as made up of different countries
KWL chart – What do we know about Africa?
What do we want to know about Africa?
What did we learn about Africa?
Focus discussion around human geography – population questions, cities, towns, villages, school system, etc.
Post questions to students for critical thinking about the demographics about each individual African country
Introduce “Your African Country” project – hand-out criteria and rubric for assessment

Lesson 3: Introduce keywords and issues that we want to focus on during this unit.
(see above keyword list)

create a living word wall in the classroom based on the key terms you want your students to know
now, focus discussion around the 10 countries that Ben visits during the expedition
MAP the countries, using atlases, map template (Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Kenya)
brainstorm a list of issues that could affect the populations of these countries
brainstorm a list of potential environmental issues that could affect cities, towns, villages in these African countries
create a list of questions that the students could ask Ben about their country

Lesson 4: Urban & Rural development

Lesson 5: Video Interviews

Students will listen to interviews about population characteristics/urban vs. rural/developing countries
Questions for people living in Africa include:
- Do you live in an urban or rural area?
- How many people live in your city/town/village?
- Are there many young people living in your city/town/village?
- Would you prefer to live somewhere else? Why?
- How does where you live affect the way to travel around your city?

Lesson 6: Population pyramids

teach a lesson about population pyramids
mini-assignment: Divide students into pairs/threes, each student is responsible to generate a population pyramid for their assigned African country
use this website to help illustrate population pyramids to your students
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbpyr.html

Lesson 7: Scrapbook class time

Lesson 8: Graphing Population Data

Students will be responsible for generating a graph of population growth/decline for the 10 countries in Africa
data will be provided by teacher
Computer lab time to generate graph using Microsoft Excel

Lesson 9 : Population Density

teach lesson on population density
calculate population density of Canada, Ottawa, etc.
have students find the information necessary to calculate the population densities of the 10 countries visited during the Africa Expedition

Lesson 10: Smart School Connected

connection can be made with Smart School students to discuss issues related to Geography
exchange in information: Canada for Egypt based on population density

Lesson 11: Presentation of Scrapbook & information to class

**Please consult the “Documents” Section for two compliments of this lesson plan:
-Scrapbook Assignment and Rubric
-Mini Activities

Please download the complete lesson plan for all activities, worksheets and detailed information of the lesson plan.

This is an overview of the lesson plan.