Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Discuss what you know or predict might be true about life in southeast Africa.

Teaching Suggestion: If your students are unlikely to know about life in southeast Africa, particularly Malawi, it might be helpful to first locate Malawi on this interactive map. You may want to split students up into groups to briefly research different components of Malawi—economy, religions, politics, and history. After students have gathered information about their topics, each group might present their findings.

• “History of Malawi” provides a 10-minute history of Malawi, touching on the country’s geography, colonial history, languages, and religion.
• “Living on a Dollar a Day in Malawi” from National Public Radio chronicles a typical day in the life of a Malawian family in the early 2000s.

2. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a memoir, which is a narrative written from the perspective of the narrator about an important event or time in their life. What stylistic choices would you expect to see in a memoir?