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Lesson Plans | Mansa Musa: The Lion of Mali | Other books | Other

Lesson Plans

Mali to Mecca: Mansa Musa Makes the Hajj by Alix E. Peshette. Detailed activity challenges 7th-grade students to become Mansa Musa's councilors preparing for the Hajj. Includes California standards, vocabulary, and a good set of resources.

Mansa Musa Takes a Trip, a very detailed webquest/acitivy for grades 6–8, part of the larger lesson/activity Trekking to Timbuktu, with sections on earlier and later history, including the manuscripts of Timbuktu.

Understanding Primary Sources: A Visit to Mali . Students read passage on Mali, and prepare a report on traditional West African cultures. Includes a student worksheet. From Education Place, Houghton Mifflin's K-8 website.

Discovering the Arts and Culture of Mali Lesson Plans. This supplement to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Art of Ancient Mali includes six lesson plans, includig oral history, mythology and creative writing.

Mansa Musa: The Lion of Mali

Amazon. Mansa Musa: The Lion of Mali by Khephra Burns (Ages 9-12). Fictionalized account of Mansa Musa's childhood and later life.

Review by Stephen Belcher, H-AfrTeach (March, 2002). Devestating critique, which bears extensive quoting:

"Readers may enjoy the allegorical progression presented in Khephra Burns' Mansa Musa, an imaginary story that takes place in the years before the celebrated king of medieval Mali took the throne. But teachers should not consider the book as a useful classroom resource. The book is based upon a syncretic spiritual vision rather than any reliable history or ethnography, and in too many regards is more misleading than informative."

…In other words, this book is using the fame of Mansa Musa to construct an allegorical and spiritual voyage which is intended to ring the major bells in an American vision of the African experience. … the corrective work necessary to clarify provenance outweighs the pedagogic value of the book."

Excerpt from Mansa Musa courtesy WBUR, Boston.

Short, positive review by Sondra Eklund, Librarian at an American air base in Germany.

Review by Thomas Manasjan, Grade 7 in Encinitas, CA. "I loved this book - it is a very, very, very good book."

Other books

Amazon. Mansa Musa: Ruler of Ancient Mali by Peggy Pancella (Ages 4-8). Publisher's blurb.

Middle School Literature list, from the handouts section of Boston University's African Studies Center.

Recommended Picture Books on Africa: A Short List from the handouts section of Boston University's African Studies Center.

Other

Teacher's guide to September 1999 issue of Footsteps on Mansa Musa. [mirror]