Where in the World?

Lesson Author: Daven Carlson

School Affiliation: Rotolo Middle School, Batavia, IL

Subject: Geography

Grade Levesl: 6-8

Time Required: 2-5 minutes

Teacher Comments: Students love this little kick-off activity. It emphasizes not only geography, but also current events as well as gathering contextual clues from photographs.

Materials:

• photocopied current event photograph from the newspaper
• atlases or geography textbooks
• deck of name cards (optional)
• reward (candy)

Procedure:

• Photocopy a current events photograph from the newspaper -- e.g. weapons inspectors arriving in Iraq, a bomb factory increasing output in Oklahoma, etc.
• Students open up their textbooks/atlases to either the world map or U.S. map, depending on the category. Tell them: "We're looking for a country,""We're looking for a state," or "We're looking for a major U.S. city."
• Shuffle the deck of name cards and draw at random.
• The selected student has 10 seconds to make an educated guess as to "where in the world" the photograph was taken.
• If the student is incorrect, move on to the next name card.
• The first student to correctly name the location earns a piece of candy (I usually give Airheads, so the kids now call this "Where in the World is the Airhead?")
• Once we've correctly named the place, I require that they all find it on their map, and indicate its location with their finger.