In Unit 1 for APWH, one of the areas I've struggled with is Africa. I found this activity on OER practicing contextualization for Mansa Musa's pilgrimage. What tips or tricks do you have for using this activity?
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Hi Melissa Nowotarski !
I haven't used this lesson in particular, but a good wrap up of this would be this OER article by Trevor Getz on The Sahel: The Empire of Mali. Another thing I do is to show my students the entire Catalan Atlas instead of the small part that is shown with just Mansa Musa as a contextualization activity and to see what the students can conclude about Mansa Musa/West Africa from just the map.
Bram Hubbell, who has presented OER Project PD, also has a great blog post with more resources on teaching W. Africa for Unit 1 here.
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I use this to emphasize the Trans-Saharan African trade. He is such a fascinating figure in history, and every year, I don't think I have had a student who has ever heard his story. One thing I like to do, not just with this one but all of the Contextualization Activities, is have groups of students go deeper into the context provided on each card to contextualize the context. So, each group (2-3) will get assigned a card and be tasked with figuring out more information about it while also determining if it is a broad or narrow context to the event.
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Great context and activities here orias.berkeley.edu/.../travels-ibn-battuta
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The Catalan Atlas is so cool! I wish there was a way to print it out or recreate it for my students to examine. We just used some of the OER maps last week, and zooming in on the maps with their tiny device screens was not very fun.
Maybe I'll tap an art class to try to recreate it in chalk for next year... -
Yes, I do love using it in class, and it's a good way to think about Contextualization for students.
I did try to print out parts of the Catalan Atlas (and other maps) enlarged enough for them to see details than just on their screen, and I laminate them to use year after year. The students can do a gallery tour and get a better idea of the overall map. Unfortunately the quality of the print out isn't great, but it's better than looking at their little deviced.
Having an art class recreate it is such a great idea! So fun for interdisciplinary collaboration!
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I love the Mansa Musa Contextualization activity. I've done it in 2 main ways:
Paper-Based Mini-Books Rubric/Primary Source
Link to an old discussion thread about the mini-books
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I am trying this contextualization activity for the first time this year (last year I did it with the topic of Transformations in Eurasian Belief Systems, and I think it would have been more effective if we had tried it earlier with the topic of Mansa Musa!) so I can't share any tips for the activity itself. However, as enrichment, you can consider this video: The Catalan Atlas - A Medieval Marvel. I love the idea of printing sections of the "atlas." Perhaps you can print a few sections and then show the video.
