In this seventh grade integrated unit students will be journeying through the eastern part of Africa.  Social Studies will be the subject driving this unit where we will be exploring the countries of Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, and Kenya.  For each of these countries we will be looking into their history, culture, physical geography, and current events.  These lessons will be supplemented with graphing skills and learning the distance formula in math.  In science class we will be examining ecosystems found in Eastern Africa and how the different species play an important role in the balance of that environment.  Students will have the opportunity to pick a topic about Eastern Africa and write a research paper on it in language arts class giving them the opportunity to look deeper into an issue as we travel through these four countries.  This topic fits nicely within the curriculum because it allows students to explore the importance of these four countries as they learn to respect, serve, and acknowledge completely different lifestyles.  There will also be an opportunity for students to participate in a service project like a food drive to allow students to serve the community.  This unit has about 32 lessons and will take about 3 to 4 weeks to complete our journey and learn what Eastern Africa is all about.

     

   God did not create us to be self- centered but to care for one another through servant -like acts similar to Jesus’ servant life for us. As Christians, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, even if our neighbors are thousands of miles away. For this reason, it is important for our students to be aware of the needs that other countries and cultures have and what struggles they go through.  And so the purpose of this unit is to make middle school students more aware of developing nations.  This unit not only has historical Biblical significance, but by learning about other people’s culture and their way of life, we can better understand what is needed.  We want the students to understand that other cultures, while different, are just as important as ours and need to be respected. Students should learn about Eastern Africa and learn how they can help people across the world.  They can see that America is not the limit; there are other lands and countries to be explored, knowledge to be gained, and respect for all the differing ethnicities. Because we will be learning about new cultures and ethnicities, this unit will show students the differences and similarities between these countries’ cultures and their own, and thus help to prepare them for working with people from other cultures and for preparing a healthy, Christian attitude towards the cornucopia of ethnicities and cultures in God’s Kingdom. 

     

   Learning about Eastern Africa will also help them meet the standards, such as learning how cultural groups interpret things differently, how they dealt with human problems in the past, and how the different parts of society such as art and literature make up their culture. This study relates to students because it helps develop respect and understanding for other cultures.  Students must be aware of problems our world faces socially, culturally, spiritually, and politically.  By becoming aware of these things, they will develop compassion for the poor realizing that God wants respect, love, generosity and acknowledgement given to those less fortunate.  There are things that we can learn from different cultures that help us to evaluate our own culture and better understand our differences and similarities.  By looking at the different cultures that make up this area we can also see which areas that they would consider us to be less fortunate.  Overall we will see that each culture has it’s pros and cons.
     

   The main objective of this unit is for students to have both knowledge and compassion for the people of the countries of Eastern Africa. They will develop a firm, Christian perspective on how to deal with these issues. And by doing this we will pique the interests of our students in service projects.  We want to show them that there are plenty of ways that they can serve their community, or another community, and that their efforts can make a big difference.  This awareness comes from students learning about other nations and their cultures.  They will also learn about other countries’ perspectives instead of only focusing in on just the United States, like we are prone to do. Academically, in the area of social studies, we want our students to understand how the history of Eastern Africa has greatly shaped the culture there.  By understanding the past we can better understand the different habits of that culture.  Through completing the research paper, we hope to give our students the ability to look into an issue and be able to look through different resources to have a better comprehension of that problem.  This goal ties back to our overarching goal, that our students might have the ability to look into an issue, become passionate about it, and do something to combat that issue.  In math we also want our students to be able to correctly interpret graphs and maps as a part of completing this unit.  Through our travels we hope to make bigger connections by using their measurements to plan out our path for this journey.  And finally, in the area of science we want our students to understand how relationships in ecology shape an ecosystem.  Overall, our students will have the knowledge they need to go forward in the curriculum of the school, and will have deepened their Christian perspective on controversial issues in our world today.