Image Attribution
Activity 1: A Long Walk to Freedom [4 points]
Nelson Mandela was an activist and civil rights leader who was born and raised in South Africa. For over 40 years (1948-1991), the country of South Africa had a political system called ‘apartheid’. This meant that there were different rules for people who had white skin than for those who didn’t. Nelson Mandela felt that this was very wrong and he fought for many years to change the law. Eventually he became the President of South Africa and ended apartheid, but not before spending 27 years in prison.
In Robben Island prison (where Mandela spent 18 years), life was very tough. Mandela had a tiny, damp, concrete cell, with only a straw mat to sleep on. During the day he was forced to work in a quarry, breaking rocks into gravel. He was only allowed to see one visitor and receive one letter every six months. At night, Nelson read and studied to be a lawyer.
For this activity, please imagine that you are Mr Mandela and that you are living at Robben Island prison. You have been given a journal and each night you write in it.
On your blog, write a journal entry imagining that you are Mr Mandela. What do you think he did each day? How did he feel? Include as much detail as you can in the journal entry.
*Please check out the Eye-Catching Blog Posts page for ideas!
Activity 2: School Strike for Climate [4 points]
You may have heard people talking about an issue called ‘Climate change’. Climate change refers to an increase in the temperature of our planet. Warmer temperatures can cause natural disasters (floods, storms, droughts, bushfires, hurricanes, etc), rising sea levels, and the extinction (disappearance) of plants and animals.
Many people in New Zealand (and overseas) are worried about climate change, including Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old girl from Sweden. She believes that climate change is not only real, but that it is a “crisis”. She is upset that adults, particularly governments and powerful people, are not taking climate change seriously. In 2018 she began protesting outside the Swedish government buildings every Friday instead of going to school. She inspired the School Strike for Climate protests and, in 2019, spoke to the United Nations about her concerns. Not everyone, however, is convinced that climate change is really happening.
Image Attribution: Greta Thunberg at the Climate March of 27 September 2019 in Montreal, Lëa-Kim Châteauneuf, CC BY-SA 4.0
For this activity, we would like you to explore the School Strike for Climate Australia website.
On your blog, list three facts (things) that you learned, and include a photograph of something that you are doing around home to help the environment.
*Please check out the Eye-Catching Blog Posts page for ideas!
Image Attribution 2
Image Attribution 3
Activity 3: “I Have a Dream” [6 points]
Martin Luther King Jr was a Christian minister in the United States of America (USA) in the 1950s and 1960s. He spent much of his life fighting for equality (equal rights) for people of colour. At the time, there were laws that kept black and white people separated - they went to different schools, used different toilets, and even sat in different parts of a bus and ate in different areas of a restaurant. This was called ‘segregation.’
Dr King did not agree with these laws and he led many protests against them. He was joined in his protests by many people, including an African American woman named Rosa Parks. In 1955, Rosa boarded a bus in Alabama (USA) and when the bus filled up with people, she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. You can read about this famous incident here and watch a video about Rosa Parks here.
The brave actions of people like Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks were instrumental in changing the way that African Americans (people of colour) were treated in the United States.
For this activity, please consider the problem that black men and women faced in America at this time.
On your blog, describe the problem. What did Rosa Parks do about the problem? How did other people react?
*Please check out the Eye-Catching Blog Posts page for ideas!
Hi Anamaria, Mrs Collins from Manaiakalani here commenting on blogs over term break. Well done on posting and participating in the SLJ this year. Nelson Mandela spent a lot of time in jail, how do you think he coped? What could he do to keep his mind and body active? Keep blogging, and commenting on others, to increase your chance of winning one of the awesome prizes and to keep up your learning over the school break!
ReplyDelete