Electronic Resource Magazine
Volume 7: Summer 2: Global Education Project: Impoving Maternal Health: AIDS in Africa, The Scope of the Problem	Printer Friendly Version

Improving Maternal Health

AIDS in Africa I:   The Scope of the Problem

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/01/g912/africaaidsI.html

This lesson is from the National Geographic.   It is designed to demonstrate the enormity of the problem of AIDS in Africa, by asking students to gauge the impact of the disease on the population of sub-Saharan Africa, in numbers and percentages, against its impact on the population of the United States.   In this lesson, students will search for data related to that discrepancy and determine mathematically the relative impact of AIDS on Africa versus its impact on the U.S.

The data required for this lesson comes from the Washington Post.   Links are provided on the lesson plan, but the site requires free pre-registration.   Teachers may choose to print off the required information rather than have students log-in.

The information for this lesson was compiled in 2001.   No doubt the statistics have changed.   A suggestion for an extension activity might be to extrapolate from the 2001 data to today.   Teachers may also want to change the focus of the lesson to a comparison with Canadian numbers, rather than to the U.S. as suggested on the lesson plan.   Canadian statistics can be found at AVERT, an international charity that tracks HIV/AIDS statistics worldwide. ( http://www.avert.org/canstatr.htm ).

This lesson would be best suited for students in Social Studies 11, Unit 2:   Population.

Curriculum Objectives

Social Studies 20, Unit 2:   Population

• Know that the rate of natural increase in a population is the difference between the birth rate and the death rate.
• Know that population growth rates vary from region to region and that regions with different population compositions make different demands on social policy.

Evaluation Links

Saskatchewan teachers have been provided support resources for student assessment and evaluation from the provincial ministry of education, Saskatchewan Learning. Specifically, teachers have been provided with the document Student Evaluation: a Teacher Handbook, in print format. Chapter 4 on specific student assessment techniques contains a variety of ready-made rubrics, rating scales, checklists, portfolio set-ups and templates that could be adapted to each task developed in your classroom. This resource is available on-line at: http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/evergreen/policy/studeval/chap4001.html. The simple templates outlined on this Saskatchewan Learning site, will help you tailor your assessment to match any activity and ensure that your objectives are being met.

Another source of easily adaptable evaluation material is Discovery School located at http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html.  The site has both subject specific evaluation tools and evaluation instruments for process oriented tasks.  You will also find rubric builders, portfolio evaluation instruments, graphic organizer evaluation strategies, etc. all at this site.

Another rubric generator can be found at http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/.  And, for a discussion on the value of using rubrics in the middle grades, teachers may want to go to http://www.middleweb.com/rubricsHG.html.

Produced with the support of the Government of Canada through
the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).