Exploring Place through Literature: Using StoryMaps and Picture Books to Highlight Innovations in Kenya, The Gambia, and Cape Coast, Ghana

StoryMaps are an excellent multimedia platform for students to analyze content in a global context. Combining maps and spatial information, visuals and narrative, StoryMaps create content and communicate in a format other than a paper or another PowerPoint. We’ll learn how to access existing StoryMaps to provide background for your students who are exploring place through literature and for your students who wish to learn about African youth changemakers. Participants will learn about StoryMaps featuring places, cultural connections, the United Nations Sustainability Goals, and more.  

Open to educators of all disciplines (including social studies teachers) who want to integrate more literature into their classrooms and strengthen their interdisciplinary curriculum with African content.

Registration includes mailed copies of all books.

Featured books include:

• Lion Lights: My Invention that Made Peace with Lions (Kenya)

• One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia (The Gambia) 

• Gizo Gizo a Tale from Zongo Lagoon (Ghana Cape Coast) 

Sponsored by the African Studies Initiative, a Title VI National Resource Center at the University of Minnesota