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A Hands-On Exploration of Africa & Colonialism

High School Humanities teacher Sharon Dunn led a hands‑on World History lesson on the Scramble for Africa, using a giant floor map to help students explore colonization, resources, borders, and their lasting impact, just in time for our visiting Japanese teacher:

After the students did the already existing reading/writing for The Scramble for Africa and Colonization, I placed the giant political map of Africa on the floor, along with color copies of three maps from their reading.
I made:
  • larger and smaller orange cards for the European countries
  • yellow cards for resources used for wealth, e.g., diamonds, ivory, humans
  • another shade of yellow for the Transatlantic Slave Trade
  • medium purple cards for the colonial languages (e.g., French, English)
  • light purple cards for Religion; Missionaries
  • light orange cards for 'Land for Power,'
  • teal blue cards for Trade Routes.
The students added information they had looked up and wrote on index cards regarding:
  • the ivory trade, diamonds, missionaries, etc. 
  • data on the numbers of tribes in sample countries, e.g., Chad, Nigeria,
  • estimated number of indigenous tribes prior to 1800.
People gathered around the political map on the floor and placed cards.
 
The follow-up conversation included me asking students:
  • To imagine themselves in their bedrooms, with a great computer, and someone from outside moves into their bedroom, uses their computer, ultimately trashes it, and leaves-- how might they feel?
    • (They were having trouble initially thinking about how Africans might feel about the impact of historical colonialism until after this analogy.)
  • To think about why so much less action for resources in North Africa: Islam, geographical deserts and different and fewer natural resources
  • Why Spain, France, and Italy in particular colonized North Africa: proximity to Europe
  • How the map of countries created necessarily differed from the areas where indigenous tribes had primarily been located—
    • possibly friction, cultural and social impacts
    • analogy to maps of Native American lands as compared to the USA's states
  • Why migrants might feel they should be able to live in European countries that had previously colonized their homelands
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