Language Arts & Literature
Stories, folk tales, poems, and letters from Peace Corps Volunteers will expand and enrich the lives of students by allowing them to see the world as Peace Corps Volunteers do.
- Making Service Count
- Students reflect on the importance of community service by reading stories about Peace Corps Volunteer experiences. Students then articulate needs within their own communities and participate in a gallery walk to generate ideas about how to address those needs through service.
- "Declaration (of a Kgomotso Girl)"
- Students will read and discuss "Declaration," a poem written by a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in South Africa. Students will focus reading and discussion on issues of gender as they appear in the poem.
- "Oh, Kingdom in the Sky"
- With a decades-long nursing career to her credit, Mary Ann Camp was a hero before she became a Peace Corps Volunteer. Still, while many Americans her age considered retirement, Peace Corps service for Mary Ann meant three tours—in Lesotho, Malawi, and Botswana—tackling health, agriculture, and education problems with her host communities.
- A Lifetime of Service
- With a decades-long nursing career to her credit, Mary Ann Camp was a hero before she became a Peace Corps Volunteer. Still, while many Americans her age considered retirement, Peace Corps service for Mary Ann meant three tours—in Lesotho, Malawi, and Botswana—tackling health, agriculture, and education problems with her host communities.
- A Morning of Weighing Babies
- Students will explore literary characters and their relationships to an author and to each other.
- A Single Lucid Moment Lesson
- Students will wrestle with resolving contrasting values between cultures.
- A South African Storm
- The writer confronts issues of racial prejudice that she encounters in South Africa, years after the abolition there of the official policy of apartheid.
- A Togolese Tale: The Big Fire
- Students will examine the universal nature of folk tales and evaluate the meaning of a tale told in Togo.
- A Year
- Students will closely examine an author's philosophical look at life through superficially mundane, but ultimately meaningful, anecdotes he describes as a teacher in Uzbekistan.
- Agroforestry Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the agroforestry challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Barrels and Buckets: Access to Water
- Students increase their understanding of access to water through reading Peace Corps Volunteer stories from Kenya (in east Africa) and Ghana (in west Africa). As part of this lesson, each student will make a book that compares access to water in the United States, Kenya, and Ghana. An overall goal is to develop the students' understanding of the similarities and differences among water use in Kenya, Ghana, and the students' own communities.
Grade Levels: 1-4
- Barren Fields
- Enhance the experiences from the barren fields challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Breaching the Gulf Between Cultures
- Students delve further into the dynamics, the challenges, and the rewards of adjusting to a new culture, as illustrated by the author's account of his father's coming to terms with Sri Lankan customs.
- Bringing Water to a Village in Lesotho
- In this lesson, students will learn about the role of water in ceremonies and celebrations around the world, as well as about the role water plays in the daily lives of those living in Lesotho.
- Capturing the Reader With Vivid Images
- Students will examine how the author tries to capture the reader's imagination immediately, through imagery--and hold on to it.
- Celebrating Our Connections Through Water
- In this unit, students will reflect on the role of water in ceremonies and celebrations around the world. Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) vignettes will provide the basis for researching and collecting data to be organized into a class celebrations chart. As a culminating activity, students will wet up learning stations and host a celebration of Water Day, leading younger students on a rotation of the stations
- Confronting Two Challenges—One Physical, One Intellectual
- Students will examine how the author confronted the challenges of a new language and a new culture.
- Cross-Cultural Dialogue Lesson
- Students will strive to view situations from more than their own point of view.
- Day-to-Day Life in a Small African Village
- Students will learn about and experience just a bit of what it's like living in a village in Tanzania—from language to geography to health and hygiene issues.
- Discussion Questions for Amber Bechtel’s Essay on AIDS in South Africa
- How can traditional healers help alleviate South Africa’s HIV/AIDS crisis? Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Bechtel takes a look at traditional medicine’s role alongside new treatments for HIV/AIDS.
- Do You Really Know What Wealth Is?
- Students will examine what it means to have wealth—a concept that turns out to be philosophical as well as economic—and examine the importance of music.
- Educating Village Girls
- Enhance the experiences from the educating village girls challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Encountering Very Different Ways of Life
- In a captivating and amusing account, the author shows just how challenging it is for someone to move from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture and then deal with adjusting to the new environment.
- Examining What Sharing Really Means
- Students examine the remarkable degree of sharing that the author encounters upon arrival in Africa.
- Fate vs. Mind: A Macedonian Folk Tale
- Students will find and appreciate that folk tales, a stylized genre of literature, tell more than stories; they convey morals or lessons. Looking into various aspects of this folk tale, students will also weigh the strengths of fate and consciousness, Folk tales can also be told in a stylized manner, as this one is.
- Geography, Climate, and Community in the Dominican Republic
- Students will begin to familiarize themselves with the geography and culture of the Dominican Republic.
- Half Man, Half Limping Rabbit
- A simple folk tale on the surface, the story told by Nina Porzucki holds deeper meaning that students can probe, ultimately examining the possible advantages of mortality over immortality.
- How Cultures Differ—Two Different Perspectives on the Same Event
- Students will examine the author's running race from two different cultural perspectives to see just how different the effects of culture can be.
- How a Writer Conveys Descriptions With a Wallop
- Students will identify strategies the author used to vividly convey qualitative and quantitative aspects of life in China, then use those strategies in writing of their own.
- Identifying Structured Patterns in Folk Tales
- Students will learn that folk tales follow a pattern, and they will attempt to analyze a story to discover its pattern.
- Identifying and Using Parallelism and Balance in Literature
- Students will examine the story for use of balanced sentences and parallelism—two literary devices—and then practice using those devices in writing of their own.
- Ilunga's Harvest Lesson
- Students examine the culturally based impulse to share with others versus the impulse to watch out for oneself or one's immediate family.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 1
- Students will read a classic folk tale for comprehension and enjoyment.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 2
- Students will learn that different cultures respect or fear certain numbers, numbers that can appear in folklore in several ways.
- Ivan the Fool Lesson 3
- Students will learn that a quest is central to many folk stories, and they will write their own, incorporating a quest.
- Just an Ordinary Day
- Students will weigh the old with the modern in contemporary Romania and examine how culture changes with the introduction of new elements.
- Life in a Hurricane Zone
- Students will learn about the nature of hurricanes and examine in detail the effect of Hurricane Georges upon the Dominican Republic.
- Living by the Book
- Reading for pleasure or cultural sensitivity? Guide your students through the cultural complexities of life on a Fijian island.
- Looking Back
- Students will weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a state-controlled social system and look into the strains that occur in the transition of a state-controlled system to a democracy, such as that occurring in Macedonia.
- 'Magic' Pablo Lesson
- Students examine what goes into hero worship and establishing unlikely friendships.
- Malaria Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the barren fields challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Microfinance Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the microfinance challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Modeling Our Writing After Another Author's Style
- Students will emulate the author's descriptive phrases in their own writing.
- Narrative Cartoons
- Based on essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers, students will create a narrative cartoon, a set of sequentially placed images that tell a story.
- Narrative Cartoons
- Young people are drawn to reading and drawing comic strips, but many young people define and restrict comic strips to pictorial images of super heroes. This lesson is designed to draw upon the interest that young people have in cartoons, and at the same time introduce students to techniques of creating alternative styles. Based on essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers, students will create a narrative cartoon, a set of sequentially placed images that tell a story. The narrative comic strip may depict one activity or be a collage of various activities. See samples of the student artwork from this lesson created by students from Roberto Clemente Community Academy in Chicago.
- Nomadic Life Lesson
- Students will examine the imagery in a rich, spare poem about an interlude between two women of different cultures in rural Niger.
- On Sunday There Might Be Americans Lesson
- Students will gain insight into the mindset of a rural boy in Niger, specifically regarding his relations with both indigenous and foreign people in the local market.
- Peace Corps Challenge Game—Water Quality
- The water pollution of the lake in the village of Wanzuzu has affected much more than just the lives of the humans in the village. Animals and plants have also been affected. Through letter writing students will have the opportunity to express their feelings by writing as if they were a fish in the lake and also understand that sometimes we all must work together to solve a community problem.
- Peace Corps Challenge—Solving the Water Quality Issue
- Newspapers are one of the main sources of information about our local and world events. Students will create a Wanzuzu newspaper about the important issues the Wanzuzu people are facing due to their polluted lake.
- Picture Perfect
- Students will use literature to explore cultural norms in another country and compare them with their own experiences.
- Recognizing How Another Culture Differs From One's Own
- Students will discover how the concepts of time and punctuality can differ markedly in the United States and another country.
- Sanitation and Disease Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the sanitation and disease challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Searching for Meanings Beneath the Surface of the Poem
- Students will examine the poem and compare perspectives of the author and the subjects of his poem.
- Seeing Things From the Someone Else's Point of View
- Students will examine the cultural trait of sharing, trying to view it from the point of view of someone in another culture.
- Seeing the World in New Ways
- Students will probe their own histories to record how they have had to expand their worldviews.
- Serious Doodling
- Students examine cartoons drawn by a Volunteer serving in the country of Jordan.
- Sleuthing a Writer's Skills
- Students will closely examine the author's lively text to determine how she achieved her many literary effects.
- Soil Runoff Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the soil runoff challenge of the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Splish-Splash: Daily Use of Water
- This lesson facilitates the students’ understanding of access to water through reading stories from Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Kenya (east Africa region) and Ghana (west Africa region). As part of this lesson, each student will make a book that compares access to water in the United States, Kenya, and Ghana. An overall goal is to develop the students’ understanding of the similarities and differences between water use by people in Kenya and Ghana and their own communities.
- Starting Off the Day (and School Year) in Ukraine
- Students will compare the first day of school in Ukraine with the first day of school in the United States, including the challenges students and teachers both face in each country.
- The Death of Old Woman Kelema
- Students will investigate methods for using imagery in literature to convey the sights and sounds of another culture. Students will compare elements of another culture to their own.
- The Extra Place Lesson
- Students take up the challenge of deciding what to do when confronted by a difficult and awkward situation.
- The Flow of Women’s Work
- Water provides an excellent lens for studying gender roles. In this lesson, students compare the division of labor in water-related work in rural Lesotho with their own households. By doing this, they will gain an understanding of the multiple factors that influence how gender roles are established in different societies. This lesson culminates with students writing letters in the voice of visitors to the United States from Lesotho.
- The Importance of Being Flexible and Open-minded as a Visitor to Another Culture
- Students will identify the advantages of being flexible when visiting or living in a culture different from one's own.
- The Importance of Speaking Another Language
- Students will evaluate how important it can be to speak a language other than their own.
- The Rigors of Learning a New Language
- Students will consider the immensity of the the task the author undertook to learn Chinese.
- The Talking Goat Lesson
- Students will analyze the meanings and patterns of a folk tale.
- Under the Tongan Sun
- Enjoy a day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Tonga.
- Using Effective, Amusing Writing As a Model
- Students will use the author's writing as a model to achieve vivid description and engaging humor in compositions of their own.
- Using Effective, Evocative Writing as a Model
- Students will analzye the author's style to learn techniques for strengthening their own writing.
- Using a Mentor Text to Develop a New Style of Writing
- Students will examine some of the author's writing traits and then make an effort to incorporate his style into their own writing.
- Using an Author's Clever Strategies in One's Own Writing
- Students will examine specific clever strategies of the author and incorporate them in their own writings.
- Visual Messages: Creating a Photomontage
- How do we best communicate a rich and complex visual world when it is captured on a two-dimensional surface? In this lesson, students will manipulate photographs by cutting, reassembling, and adding two-dimensional materials, such as text, maps, charts, documents, notes, and drawings. Using essays and photos provided by Peace Corps Volunteers, students will create a photomontage that is calculated to focus attention or alter viewers’ attitudes regarding environmental issues in the United States and Africa. While creating the photomontage, students will be challenged not to ask the question “What is this photograph of?,” but to ask, “What is the photograph about?”
- Waking Up, Stepping Out
- Students will focus on a rich and colorful description of a culture unfamiliar to most of them, and then compare the similarities and differences they find between Nepali culture and their own.
- Water Contamination Challenge
- Enhance the experiences from the water contamination challenge from the Peace Corps Challenge game with lesson plans and additional resources from World Wise Schools.
- Water Uses and Children’s Lives in East Africa
- This lesson uses students’ interactions with water to help them compare their lives with those of children in Kenya or Tanzania. It looks at ways that access to water helps define children’s roles in the family, and how this relates to culture. Students write essays and draw pictures to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts.
- Water in Africa
- Water in Africa reflects the deep connection of water to all aspects of life in African countries, a concept Coverdell World Wise Schools has captured in the learning units featured on this site. Ninety Peace Corps Volunteers contributed firsthand accounts and photographs to the lessons and activities you will find.
- Water: A Source of Life and Culture
- Students will use primary and secondary sources to research water as a feature of culture. Using text and photos from Peace Corps Volunteers serving in various African countries, students will uncover the role water plays in shaping daily life. Students will analyze the material and create symbols that summarize their findings. Symbols will be collected and arranged to make a contemporary work of art.
- Water: Narrative vs. Expository Texts
- Many students, especially students with limited English language skills, have difficulties determining the difference between narrative and expository texts. This unit will use vignettes written by Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Lesotho and Madagascar to compare these types of texts. As final products, students will write both a narrative essay and an expository essay. This unit was piloted with high school second language learners.
- What Is Good Use of Time?
- Students delve into questions about how best to use one's time—in one culture or another.
- What Sharing Really Means
- Students will examine closely the meaning of generosity and how sharing can be a cultural trait.
- Where in the World Is the Dominican Republic?
- Students will examine the effect of one's environment upon how one lives, and they will begin to investigate the geography of the Dominican Republic.
- Windmills and Blogs: The Impact of Technology in Rural Peru
- This lesson encourages students to explore the role of technology in society, specifically its benefits and consequences. They will do this by reflecting on the role of technology in their own community and by viewing a Peace Corps Volunteer's slide show and discussing the uses of technology—windmills and computers—in a Peruvian village.
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- “Mosetsana”
- Students will read and discuss "Mosetsana," a poem written by a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in South Africa. Students will focus reading and discussion on issues of gender, education, and family as they appear in the poem.