NYCDOE: Passport to Social Studies - grade 3, Nigeria case study

Note to Teachers: To help with remote and hybrid learning, digital materials for this unit are available on the NYCDOE TeachHub. Access these materials by following these instructions.

This is a sample case study of Nigeria relating to the grade three scope and sequence, titled Nigeria Case Study. It was developed by a team of NYCDOE staff and teachers, in collaboration with scholars of the humanities and social sciences as well as museum curators. Students will immerse themselves in the topic by discussing focus questions, reading and analyzing a rich collection of diverse primary and secondary sources, examining artifacts, and interpreting images, such as paintings and photographs, maps, and political cartoons.

This guide offers a multitude of perspectives on the geography, history and cultural practices of Africa’s most populous country. Topics of representative lessons in this unit include the researching and comparing of Nigerian cultural and linguistic groups, exploring economic concepts like “scarcity” as it applies to the Nigerian marketplace, and analyzing and exploring traditional adire cloth and designs, especially through the work of Nike Davies Okundaye. Lessons also have students analyzing the meaning and story elements of Nigerian myths and how they reflect their values and belief systems, exploring the history of Nigerian trade and traditional Nigerian art, developing opinions about the benefits and costs of their considerable oil and natural gas reserves, and gaining an understanding of current events in terms of human rights, deforestation and land degradation in Nigeria.

To evaluate student mastery of content knowledge, cognitive processes, and critical thinking skills, this unit includes formative assessments, and a performance-based assessment activity, which has students writing a compare-and-contrast informational essay about daily life in the United States and Nigeria by organizing evidence about each country using vocabulary they have developed throughout the unit in self-compiled dictionaries and notebooks.

Please note: the complete set of NYCDOE K-8: Passport to Social Studies Core Curriculum materials include a wide-range of trade books and primary documents, in addition to this unit of study. In order to support rigorous social studies instruction and student inquiry, we recommend that teachers integrate these resources into their daily instruction and assessment plans.

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