Teacher Notes Africa
Big Idea - Latitude
Spatial Thinking Skill – Transition (sequence)
Scaffold Outline:
3-5: These lessons focus on an important fact about latitude – the fact that the sun shines down on just one
specific latitude line of the rotating earth on any given day. As a result:
1. Different places at the same latitude receive the same amount of solar energy, and
2. Places at different latitudes get different amounts.
Over the year, the amount of solar energy is greatest near the equator and decreases to a minimum at the poles,
but there are great seasonal differences. These seasonal differences have one extremely important consequence
in Africa – the zone of rainy weather (what we call the Equatorial Rainy Belt) seems to “move” north in
summer and south in winter. In other words, the rainy belt is positioned over a different latitude in different
seasons.
Resources: The sample activities approach the idea of latitude in a number of different ways – by looking
at the latitudinal patterns of temperature, rainfall, animal ranges, disease organisms, population, and
languages. The clickable atlas and the Big Idea Presentation add fires, floods, ancient capitals, and trade
routes to this list of related topics. All of these consequences of latitude (and many more) can be used at
both ends of a lesson – as examples in a setup presentation about causes, or in a summary of effects.
A map of Deserts of the World emphasizes an important fact about the global location of North Africa,
South Africa, and Australia. These three large areas are located at the right latitude (about 25-30
degrees, about 1500-2000 miles away from the equator) to be “missed” by two of the major rain-making
processes on earth:
1. The equatorial (convective) process of rising air and thunderstorms, and
2. The mid-latitude (frontal) process of air mass “collision” along warm and cold fronts.
In other words, these three areas are situated at the latitude of subsiding air, which is unlikely to cause
rain or snow. As a result, most of the land at this latitude is desert – the Sahara of northern Africa, the
Kalahari (Namibian) of southern Africa, and the Great Australian desert.
6-12: These middle and high school activities relate geographical ideas about latitude with historical ideas
about early civilizations, ancient capitals, the slave trade before and after European contact, the spread of Islam,
colonialism and independence, and modern issues with ancient diseases.
Resources: The sample activities about climagraphs, malaria, and languages are also appropriate at this
grade level. There are plenty of good case studies and videos about African environments, and it takes
only a sentence or two to ground them in a latitude-based mental map of the continent. Individual
investigations can focus on a variety of African issues (water supply, grazing, desertification, oil
production, cross-border conflict, and patterns of religion, to name a few). During debriefing, try to get
students to connect each of these to their position in the sequence of environments from equatorial
rainforest to tropical desert.
Activity
Animals in Africa
Shape of Africa
Latitude and Slavery
Map of Languages
Michigan Content Expectations
6-G1.3.2: Explain the locations and distributions of physical and human
characteristics of Earth by using knowledge of spatial patterns
7-G3.2.1: Explain how and why ecosystems differ as a consequence of
differences in latitude, elevation, and human activities.
7-G1.1 Spatial Thinking:
Use maps and other geographic tools to acquire and process information
from a spatial perspective. (Also 6-G1.1)
7-G2.1.1: Describe the landform features and the climate of the region
under study
7-G3.1.1: Construct and analyze climate graphs for two locations at
different latitudes and elevations in the region to answer geographic
questions and make predictions based on patterns. (Also 6-G3.1.1)
Equatorial
Rainy Belt
Climagraphs
Rainy Day Graph
Sun Angles and Seasons
Malaria Association
7-G3.2.1: Explain how and why ecosystems differ as a consequence of
differences in latitude, elevation, and human activities.
7-G3.2.2: Identify ecosystems of a continent and explain why some
provide greater opportunities (fertile soil, precipitation) for humans to use
than do other ecosystems and how that changes with technology.
7-G1.2.6: Apply the skills of geographic inquiry to analyze a problem or
issue of importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Capstone: Recent trends seem to indicate that global climate change is likely to be less dramatic in terms
of actual temperature change but more harmful for human activity in Africa than in northern regions like
Canada, China, or Russia. Data suggest, for example, that rainy seasons might get shorter in the savanna and
grassland regions, where most of the food production occurs, while the range of diseases such as malaria might
actually expand.
Resources: The internet has no shortage of good materials dealing with climate change – an image search
will uncover maps from IPCC, NASA, NOAA, and many other sources (use those acronyms as
keywords along with the words climate and change or trend). The big pedagogical issue is to cut
through the complexity and tease out the specific impacts that seem likely in different parts of a large
continent such as Africa. This project has a number of resources that can aid in this process: the bigidea presentation, the clickable Atlas, and many of the sample activities in this folder. For ideas about
links with other disciplines, see the scaffolding diagram.
Curriculum Connections:
Activities
Approx
Grade
Related
Class
Common
Core
Spatial
Reasoning
Animals and their habitats distance from Equator
Basic shape of Africa
Elem
Earth Sci
Reading
Association
Elem
Geometry
Math
Pattern
Seasonal latitude of
Equatorial Rainy Belt
Latitude and the slave trade
(3 activity clickable)
Match climagraphs and
places in W Africa
Make/interpret graph of
rainy days and latitude
Analyze sun angles, latitude,
seasons
Malaria vectors, latitude, and
climate change
Languages and latitude in
Africa
E/M/U
Earth Sci
Math
Aura
M/U
History
Reading
Transition
M/U
Earth Sci
Math
Transition
M/U
Earth Sci
Math
Transition
M/U
Earth Sci
Math
Transition
M/U
History, ES
Reading
Association
Upper
History, ES
Reading
Association
Keywords
environment, animal, range,
dot map, latitude
shape, generalization, box,
rectangle, oval
ITCZ, Equator, uplift,
seasonal, shift, rainy season
Equator, trade winds,
westerlies, windward
Climagraph, temperature,
precipitation, season
latitude, rain, months, graph,
axis
latitude, zenith, horizon, angle,
season, Tropic
dot map, area map, similarity,
correlation, vector
dot map, latitude, density,
dialect, trading language