Introduce the World

As a student teacher, I was frustrated every time that I heard the statistics about how poor our country does on geography, particularly when it is anywhere but our own country, while students all around the world know geography quite well.

As I teacher, I found that it is still true in my classroom. They are not sure the difference between country, state, continent, and city! When I asked what state they lived in I heard answers such as "Costa Mesa" and "United States." When I introduced the continents, I would sometimes hear that our state was North America as well. I decided that I needed to do something about it.

My class is as busy as the next person's, but I felt this was important enough that it needed to be fitted in somewhere. I decided that I could squeeze it into our opening time. We do the flag, calendar, etc. but we also learn 1 fact a day about a country, with a new country each week.

My board is set up like this:




It is a pocket chart that I mounted on the wall, and I used sentence strips to write the facts. The facts I found from a variety of resources, but mainly searching on the internet for things about the country that I thought the kids would find interesting. Any big world records, largest waterfall type stuff were great, as were customs about birthdays or names. You know what your age group finds interesting, write those down.

On the map I put a pushpin for each country we study so by the end of the year we can look back over all the countries we learned about. While I have my student write the date, I review the 7 continents, and talk about what countries are on them. At the beginning their knowledge is sparse, but by the end of the year, I can name a continent and students are fairly accurate at naming countries found on that continent. (I also ask the opposite way, what continent is China on, etc.)

In addition to the fact of the day, I make available for centers crafts based on that country and I bring food that is typical or native to that country every so often. This year I plan on bringing parents into the geography more by seeing if any parents want to bring food based on where they or their parents immigrated from. I had one family do this last year and it worked out great, and I would like to build on it.

I timed the countries around holidays as much as I could, with China around the time of the Chinese New Year, and Ireland around St. Patrick's day etc.

The kids love it, the parents love it and best of all, they have a better understanding of the world.