This is another installment of my
Geography Series, Geography IV: Africa. It's in a similar format as
Geography II and
Geography III but has been tweaked a bit more to handle Korean kids who don't really know anything about Africa. Plus I wanted to make good on my
threat.
Africa:
- Native Speaker introduces the concept of Africa and the subareas. 5 minutes.
- Native Speaker brainstorms as many countries as possible and categorizes them into the various subareas. 5 minutes.
- Students are divided into groups and perform African worksheet. 10 minutes.
- Native Speaker goes over the African worksheet with students. 25 minutes.
Notes:
- Predictably the kids knew nothing about Africa, except for the odd soccer enthusiast or kid who has seen The Mummy on OCN.
- This lesson, like the Geography II & III, can be taught in two routes. The fist route involves the kids memorizing the study map and turning Africa worksheet into a multi round game. The second glosses over the worksheet and goes into the Traveler IQ game.
- The boys seemed to enjoy the Traveler IQ more than the girls, but then the boys seemed to enjoy geography more that the girls. And then it was about five to ten boys per class who wanted ‘one more time’ or who stayed after the bell to play Traveler IQ again.
- Forcing the Students to go through 54 countries will takes a long time; splitting the countries into 5 groups give each group a manageable chunk.
- When taking up the Africa worksheet the 5 groups easily transforms into a game with 5 rounds:
- As outlined in the lesson, you give the each group a map and tell them to memorize it for five minutes.
- You hand out the worksheet and take the map away despite their protests and give them ten minutes to fill in the map.
- Around the five minute mark they'll start to sputter so offer a hint by providing the list of countries for spelling purposes.
- When they're approaching the ninth or so minute I have volunteer from each group come up to my desk and pick up a small white board, a dry eraser and a marker.
- Each questions takes the form of a country picture (again Microsoft clip-art covers most countries in Africa) and the number on the worksheet. A correct answer requires the group to properly spell the country on the white board and raise the white board above their head.
- I present the beginning of each round with a list of countries. If they're smart they'll feverishly copy this list down somewhere and have a valid stockpile of answers; just writing one country down and continually showing it for each question will result in at least one correct answer.
- I was able to play the Traveler IQ game like a giant Price is Right game because I have a access to a lab with an internet connected computer and a screen projector.
- As outlined in the lesson you give the each group a study map but you also give them the worksheet at the same time. I handed out both the study map and the worksheet face down to set up a race competition.
- Give them X minutes to fill in the blanks or stop when one group has finished.
- Remove the study maps and leave them with only their worksheets as reference material.
- The Traveler IQ Game prompts the user with a place that the he or she has to find and click on a map. The closest the user gets, the more points the user scores, and the further the user gets in the multi level game.
- Each group elects a captain and that captain plays the game on the computer *without* the worksheet.
- The rest of the group watches the captain's progress via the computer projector and helps the captain by yelling North, South, East, West to guide the captain to the correct location before the time runs out. Though the kids usually forget this and slip into Korean directions.
- Keep track of score and repeat until you have one group. Then if you need more time you can break up the group into individual and compete for the smartest kid in the class. At this point the students should have seen enough answers from previous rounds to make it through 3,4 or even 5 levels.
- Since the captain on the computer has his back towards the projector screen, I usually stand beside the screen and circle the correct area with my hand to give the group a general direction of where the captain should place his flag.
The
study map and the
map test both come from
worldatlas.com.
The Traveler IQ Game is found at
TravelPod.
Everything else was found in
Microsoft Clipart; the clip art style that I use is
1409 and it's large enough to cover most countries. When it didn't I swapped to style
550. And if you hate maps, you cold always swap them for
flags.
More information about my lessons can be found
here.
