Lesson Plan - Africa’s Youth Boom

Build Knowledge and Vocabulary

Have students choose an African country to research using Junior Scholastic’s interactive atlas and almanac. At junior.scholastic.com/atlas, have students zoom in on the country and click its name. Ask them to write three sentences sharing facts about the country. Discuss responses. Then use the Skill Builder Words to Know to preteach domain-specific terms from the article.

Read the Article

Read the article aloud or have students read it independently or in pairs. As students read, direct them to mark benefits of Africa’s growing population with the letter B and challenges with the letter C. (Or have students highlight that information using different colors.)

Answer Close-Reading Questions

Have students write their responses, or use the Close-Reading Questions to guide a discussion.

• What is one benefit of Africa’s growing population? What is one challenge? (Cause and Effect)
Sample response: One benefit is that African music, fashion, and art are becoming more popular around the world. One challenge is unemployment. Already, there aren’t enough paid positions for everyone. Within the next decade, Africa will need to provide enough jobs for 1 billion working-age people.

• How does the population map support the article? (Text Features)
The population map shows color-coded median age ranges for each country and specific median ages for five African countries, four European countries, the United States, and Japan. Only two countries outside of Africa have a median age range of 10-19 years old. All but two countries in Africa have a median age range under 30 years old. This data supports the idea that Africa has the fastest-growing population of young people.

Analyze Population Maps

Have students answer the questions about the map on pages 16-17. Review answers. Use the Population Map lesson from our Map Skills Boot Camp for more practice. The full curriculum is at junior.scholastic.com/mapskills.

Assess Comprehension

Assign the 10-question Know the News quiz, available in PDF and interactive forms. You can also use Quiz Wizard to assess comprehension of this article and three others from the issue.