Connecting Africa

If you've been following our classroom blog, you know that students have been hard at work these last couple of months learning about the political, cultural, physical and economic characteristics of Africa.   

As a culmination of their learning, they have been working on a project-based learning (PBL) module where they were challenged to put their knowledge and understanding about the physical and human geography of Africa into action. The guiding question throughout their research and investigation was:  

• How do human and physical characteristics of Africa influence its economic interdependence?

The PBL module was based on the following scenario:  

A conference of African leaders has adopted as its top priority the building of a highway across the continent from Tunis, Tunisia to Cape Town, South Africa. The purpose of the highway is to foster political cooperation among the African nations and to promote economic development, trade, and tourism.

The highway will be financed by the World Bank, which, together with the African leaders, has recently rejected an initial proposal for the highway put forward by a competitor of your company.  The World Bank is now seeking alternate proposals.

You have been asked to submit to the World Bank a proposal for an alternative route for the highway. You will analyze a series of maps, data, atlases and other references to explain why the first route was rejected and create a more suitable route with reasoned support for it.

Students were assigned to work in small groups and were handed RFP's (Request for Proposals) in order to begin their investigative process.  Over the last couple of weeks, students have been researching, analyzing and evaluating data in an effort to put together proposals that support the highway objectives, which essentially support economic development throughout Africa. 

Students are quite proud of their proposals and are excited to share their work with you.  As such, I will be posting their proposals on the bulletin board outside of our classroom (Room 33) and will leave them up through the duration of parent-teacher conferences next month.  Please stop by before or during conference week and check out their amazing work.  It is a true testament to their learning and evidence of their ability to interpret and apply the geographic concepts and skills they have learned. I think you will be most impressed with the results.

PBL designed by MensaforKids.org