7th Grade Humanities: “Postcards Home” Africa Research Project

Throughout the unit, students engaged in work that stretched not only their academic skills but also their capacity to see beyond their own experiences and appreciate the richness and complexity of the world around them.

As they interacted with a range of texts, videos, and even art and artifacts, which seventh graders had the opportunity to view during a field trip to the Arts of Africa collection at the de Young Museum, students examined how the combined forces of geography, culture, and history have shaped the nations and people of Africa. By engaging with diverse materials, as well as discussing the themes of Born a Crime–where Trevor Noah explores issues of identity and belonging, power and resistance, and inequality and social justice in South Africa–students developed the tools needed to comprehend and question texts, consider multiple perspectives, and connect their learning to big ideas, setting the stage for deeper inquiry in future units.

For their "Postcards Home" project, students each took responsibility for conducting research into three countries from their group’s assigned region of Africa. The phases of the project challenged students to transition from gathering facts to communicating their findings; they focused on the skill of accurately paraphrasing information from reliable sources before creatively synthesizing what they learned into authentic-feeling postcards, one from each country. The postcards required students to incorporate visual elements, such as relevant images and stamps, along with a personal letter written in descriptive language that would convey their research details while making the reader feel like they were really there, traveling alongside the writer on a vividly imagined trip through that particular region of Africa. 

By synthesizing their research into personal postcards, students were able to connect their learning about Africa with their own interests, which ranged from food, to music, to architecture. The “Postcards Home” created by our seventh graders remain on display in our classroom, serving as a mosaic that showcases the diversity of Africa they learned about, the intellectual curiosity they bring to school daily, and the cultural awareness Live Oak humanities students continuously develop as they grow into responsible, informed citizens of the world.