For use with "What's Your Story?" curriculum project written by A. Groves for the Fulbright Hays Seminars Abroad program.

1. Writing Prompt – Africa<br />Writing Assignment: Explain why written and oral tradition is important to preserving and protecting the history and culture of Africa? Remember to prove what you say with evidence from the unit.<br />Standards:<br />Writing Strategies 1.0<br />1.1 – Create an organizational structure that balances all aspects of the composition and uses effective transitions between sentences to unify important ideas<br />1.2– Support all statements and claims with anecdotes, descriptions, facts and statistics, and specific examples<br />1.3– Use strategies of note taking, outlining, and summarizing to impose structure on composition drafts<br />1.7– Revise writing to improve organization and word choice after checking the logic of the ideas and the precision of the vocabulary<br />History/Social Science 7.4.5 - The students will be able to tell why written and oral traditions were important in the transmission of African history and culture.<br />Length: One 11 to 14-sentence paragraph<br />Due Date: Your handwritten paragraph is due at the end of this period.<br />Total Points Possible: 20<br />Question: What are three reasons that written and oral tradition was important to the transmission of African history and culture? <br />Task: Write a persuasive 11 to 14 paragraph in which you:<br />1) Present a clear topic sentence in your paragraph that answers the question above.<br />2) Provide evidence that supports your topic sentence. <br />3) Analyze, or tell how, that evidence supports your topic sentence. <br />4) Use transition words or phrases to unify important ideas. <br />5) Include a concluding sentence that sums up your reasons and revisits the topic.<br />Vocabulary:<br />Use at least 4 of the 8 terms, or forms of the terms, correctly within your essay to help support your topic sentence:<br />griot ancestor culturedescendent<br />history folktaleWest Africapreserve<br />