Afghanistan? That’s somewhere near Pakistan and Iran, right?

Students, Mr. Jabiz had a great post last year about pecha kuchas. We will be making one about Afghanistan as launch our unit on Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzman.

As we begin our journey toward Afghanistan, let’s meet, Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl. The BBC published her blog anonymously before her name became public due to the brutal attack she experienced.

As we read Boy Overboard, ask yourself what you and others can do to make the Millenium Development Goals a reality. The goals face very real challenges as described in the book and also experienced in the lives of people like Malala today.

Where in the World is Afghanistan?

Posted by Jabiz in Grade 7 Language A on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 10:42 am

Hey grade sevens!

The novel we are about to start reading takes place in Afghanistan, so it is always important to understand a bit about the setting of a novel to help build context. That means, that it helps to know what it is like for the characters and understand various things that affect their lives.

Today we will play with something called a Pecha Kucha. This is a Japanese style presentation where you are only allowed twenty slides, and you can only talk for twenty seconds for each slide with little or no text. We will be doing something similar. You will only have ten slides, but everything else applies. So here is your task:

• Do some research on Afghanistan.
• Find out ten interesting things about the country: its people,  history, food, clothes, landscapes etc…
• Find ten photos that tell the story of what you find. (Remember they must be Creative Commons, though this may be difficult. You will see why) This site is a good place to start.
  
• Put your photos together and think about what you can say about each one for twenty seconds.
• We will record your presentations in QuickTime then add them over the photos.
• You can also explore a bit with Google Earth! Remember to record what you find.

Try not to focus on all the wars, but do not ignore that history either. Remember, this is not about finding facts and charts about population and currencies etc..it is about telling the story of a country in ten slides.