This is a really fun lesson if you have creative students.

I tell them many times that this can be fun or boring, it depends on if they want to have fun or not.

I go through some words relating to government on the powerpoint. I make sure that they know most of the words. After we go over the vocab I put them in groups and have them create their own country following my guidelines. I give them a black piece of paper and have them use that to create a poster for it. The last slide of the powerpoint has the guidelines.

I have them present their countries to the class and they vote on the country they like the most.

Some countries I have had:

Handsome Boy Island- It is illegal to be ugly, short or mean to girls
It is legal for one woman to have many husbands

Harry Potter's Country- Main export is magic, school is mandatory for students but only for 3hrs a day where they study magic only.

I think this is a good idea too.
I'm using it to do something similar. My students are rather low performers so I think the PowerPoint would be a little complex for them. Also, my TV is broken with no schedule to be fixed!
Instead, I've made a task worksheet (that I will explain before giving out with 6 columns on the board). It may be a good idea to laminate it and hand out one to each team, so they can be used again and again.
I've attached it. I hope it's useful.

 

great idea! i used it during my afterschool class

Has anyone used this lesson?  I see lots of "Thanks for the materials!" posts, but not a lot telling if this lesson went well, needed modification, gave students difficulty or whatnot.  Looks interesting, so I'm just trying to find out a little more about it.  Thanks!

thanks for all these ideas Im getting some neat things to use

Loving part 2 of this lesson. Most kids are really into it. Had one kid i haven't heard all semester present his poster to the class -joy-. I found the more animated I was when giving instructions and the more I stressed this can be fun the better results I got.

Here's part 2

AHH this has so much win!!!

I'm thinking of going all out and maybe making it a 3 week thing with my middle school students.

First week will be learning the vocabulary and that awesome bomb game (thanks jbaile).

Second week we will review all the vocab and begin planning out their new countries in groups. If there is time they will start their posters.

 Third week they will create the posters and I will hang them up in my classroom. I think I might give all my co-teachers ten stickers and they will rate the posters when the kids aren't around by putting stickers on the ones that include all the components and are most creative. Winning poster gets a prize.

Thank you Mandolyn and jbaile :)

I recently did this lesson with both my 1st and 2nd grade high school students. For some classes it worked really well! I was really surprised at the level of participation while yeah I had some who were a bit lost and bored.
 
I made 2 prezis. My 1st graders tend to be a bit higher level than my 2nd graders, so the first prezi was for them and the second for my 2nd graders. Overall I would say my students aren't at a very low level.

The lesson is split into 2 parts. The vocab was covered last week and the make your own country activity and bomb game will be done this week.

I also have a lotto/raffle reward system that probably played a LARGE part in making this a great lesson. Since the beginning of the semester when a student participates or at least tries in my class, I give them a ticket to write their name and student number on. Afterwards at the end of each class I collect these tickets. Every month I hold a raffle to pick out 3 winners. Winners get candy and BP (Blue point).

Anyway for this lesson I spaced out the raffle drawings, once in the beginning, once in the middle, and once at the end. This keeps students attention as they are trying to earn tickets throughout the entire lesson.

In the beginning I give them a chance to earn tickets by simply saying a country's name. This gives the less vocal students at least one ticket.
 
We go over each term. I have them read them together and I provide examples etc. I created two worksheets for my two grades. They are a basic matching and fill in the blank. You probably won't get to the fill in the blank section.

For the population portion of the lesson, I quickly review numbers 10 to 1 billion with students. Then I have two students provide guesses to what the population of Gimhae, Seoul, South Korea, New York City, and the United States. The student whose number is the closest  to the answer is the winner and gets a ticket.

For natural wonders and man-made wonders if a student raised their hand and guessed the location, they also received a ticket.

The rest is on prezi2 and prezi1.