This is another installment of my
Geography Series, Geography III: The Return of the Asian. It's the same lesson as
Geography II: The European Strikes Back (man, I'm hilarious) with some minor tweaks.
Asia:
- Native Speaker introduces the concept of Asia and the sub-areas. 5 minutes.
- Native Speaker brainstorms as many countries as possible and categorizes them into the various sub-areas. 5 minutes.
- Students are split into groups and perform the Country Description activity using brainstormed countries. 15 minutes.
- Native Speaker presents the complete list of all countries for Students to memorize. 5 minutes.
- Students perform Asian worksheet. 10 minutes.
- Native Speaker goes over the Asian worksheet with students. 5 minutes.
Notes:
- Predictably the kids completely understand the Eastern Asian section of Asia worksheet; anything else the kids may or may not know.
- Depending on your students the study map maybe incorrect; they will protest the labelling of Sea of Japan but be oblivious to other colonial controversies, like the Burma/Myanmar name.
- This lesson, like the Geography II, can be taught in two routes. The first excludes the Asia worksheet and consists of the brainstorm, describe a country activity, and the slide show game. The second excludes describe a country activity and turns the Asia worksheet into a multi round game with the slide show game as the bonus round.
- Forcing the Students to go through 47 countries will takes a long time; splitting the countries into 6 groups gives each group a manageable chunk and when taking up the Asia worksheet the 6 groups easily transforms into a game with 7 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 (Microsoft clip-art surprisingly covers all countries in Asia, except for Singapore and East Timor) 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.
- The seventh round is really the Slide Show game that I throw up when the class finishes the game early.
The
study map and the
map test both come from
worldatlas.com.
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. Alternatives map styles are
1158, or
396. If you hate maps, you cold always swap them for
flags.
More information about my lessons can be found
here.
