This is the create-a-country project which requires students – upper elementary, middle, or high school – to demonstrate fundamental geography skills. I mention it is a scalable assignment. Simply, there are different versions of this two-part assignment here: an upper elementary school assignment, a middle school assignment, and a high school assignment. Of course, you can mix-and-match to fit the needs of your classes. Both parts of this assignment require students to think critically to earn full credit. The first part of the assignment requires them to define their country’s unique characteristics. The second part is a map-making assignment in which they take the displayable characteristics from part one and illustrate them on a blank piece of paper. This can be a very powerful and engaging project! I have used this assignment with success in a few ways. Sometimes, I use only the map-making part of the assignment to determine what my students already knew about map-reading skills. Another time, I used the definition assignment to reinforce an introductory unit on physical and cultural geography. I have also combined both parts of the assignment as a unit-ending project. I find this project asks students to think critically about the many characteristics that make up a country. This packet contains the following: •Two assignments-in-one: a definition assignment which requires detailed, thoughtful answers and a map-making assignment. •There are three versions of the definition part of the assignment. These have been built to scale. Consider using the first version in an upper elementary classroom, the second version in a middle school classroom, and the third version in a high school classroom. •Five lesson extension ideas. •Two rubrics you may consider using to evaluate each part of the project.

This PowerPoint presentation is titled “The Great Wall of China - Let’s Take a Tour!” This is one of a handful of projects I have written about ancient civilizations. The complete assignment includes (1) the PowerPoint presentation, (2) a KWL chart to activate the lesson, (3) 15 questions you can use to guide the lesson or use as a quiz afterwards, and (4) a handful of research prompts you might use to extend the lesson. This particular PowerPoint is chock full of quality information about the Great Wall of China including historical information about the major dynasties that build the walls, details about how the walls were constructed, statistics about its size, and much more. Of course, I have also filled the presentation with high-quality color photos and clickable links to some key vocabulary terms and official Chinese history websites. If you have access to Google Earth and YouTube, you will also find clickable links embedded in the document so you can take your students on a virtual field trip to see the Great Wall of China from above (Google Earth) and to a classroom-safe video (YouTube) offering a first-person perspective so your students can feel what it is like to climb some of the steepest parts of the wall. I envision using this PowerPoint presentation in a handful of ways: as either a classroom instruction tool on a SmartBoard or as a self-guided PowerPoint that students can access as a homework assignment.

Would you like a fun, challenging way to teach students the fifty states and capital cities? This set of 25 FULL-COLOR Bingo game sheets will do just that! This packet contains a few components to help you and your students practice memorizing states and/or state capitals. You will find the following items: 1. Clue sheets for both states and state capitals; 2. Twenty (20) full-color Bingo sheets containing state outlines; 3. A full-color map labelled with both states and state capitals. What you will need: markers, coloring pencils, or regular pencils for students to mark the Bingo boxes I have used this packet primarily with middle school 6th grade students, but I believe it can be modified to work with upper elementary school students, too.

Absolute and relative location are two basic, important geography tools that all students must master. While there are many available assignments to teach these concepts to elementary school and middle school/junior high school students, here’s one with a twist! Students will locate all 30 NBA teams using absolute and relative location. Absolute location, of course, requires students to use latitude and longitude to give their answers. Relative location requires cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest). This would be an effective assignment as the NBA season opens its latest season. Included, please find the assignment with chart for record-keeping, an answer key, a blank map, a political USA/Canada map, and an idea for an extension assignment. Plus, how about this idea for an educational technology twist? I used Google Earth and a custom-made kml file to bring the stadium tour to life in your classroom. I have included simple instructions to install the file on your laptop or desktop computer.

Absolute and relative location are two basic, important geography tools that all students must master. While there are many available assignments to teach these concepts to elementary school and middle school/junior high school students, here’s one with a twist! Students will locate all 30 MLB teams using absolute and relative location. Absolute location, of course, requires students to use latitude and longitude to give their answers. Relative location requires cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and intermediate directions (northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest). This would be an effective assignment as the Major League Baseball season opens its latest season. Included, please find the assignment with chart for record-keeping, an answer key, and an idea for an extension assignment. Plus, how about this idea for an educational technology twist? I used Google Earth and a custom-made kml file to bring the stadium tour to life in your classroom. I have included simple instructions to install the file on your laptop or desktop computer. Find the link inside this packet. This tour allows students to utilize modern technology in the classroom to better understand the locations of baseball facilities while also observing diverse environments and city structures from the air. There are several other real world benefits and I hope you will share them with your students!

This assignment is titled "Let's Explore Mexico! Use a Map to Find Cities, Landforms, States, Bodies of Water and More." This assignment includes 20 questions that require students to analyze a map of Mexico for boundaries and borders, major cities, landforms, and bodies of water. This would make a great introduction to middle school students preparing to study Mexico for the first time in either a World Languages class or a geography class. You might even consider it a "substitute assignment" and leave it for a substitute teacher on a day you are away from the classroom. This assignment works well as an individual assignment or as a partner assignment.

Consider purchasing this bundle of four 25-question assignments that you can use as a set of daily activities, a set of bell ringer assignments, or as a single research assignment. There are 100 questions to use in your classroom. All answers are included. You will find short research questions related to Ancient History, American History, World History, World Geography, Economics, Government, and more! It is NEVER too early to teach students how to conduct research. This is one of the fundamental skills required of 21st century learners in higher education. I have used these assignments in my classroom, and I have found that my middle school students enjoy them. You might also try to use them in higher level elementary classrooms (5th and 6th grades). Please find each 25-question assignment and an answer key for easy grading in this packet. There are four documents total.

Consider purchasing this quick vocabulary assignment to introduce your elementary or middle school students to some basic geography terminology about landforms and bodies of water. You might even use it as a vocabulary quiz. The choice is yours! I believe this assignment would be best for kids between the ages of 10-14. There are twenty terms found in the complete assignment, with kid-friendly definitions, and an answer key for quick, simple grading. The assignment includes all five themes of geography (location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and regions) and major lines of latitude and longitude (Antarctic Circle, Arctic Circle, Equator, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Prime Meridian). Additional vocabulary terms include: Absolute Location, Degree, Grid, Hemisphere, Latitude, Longitude, Meridian, Parallel, and Relative Location.

This is a collaborative research project about Canada's geography that requires students to role-play as product designers for a fictitious travel association, Travel Canada. An excellent example of differentiated instruction, students may research any of Canada's provinces or territories to find information that makes their chosen place unique: major landmarks, landforms, major and minor cities, symbols, fun facts, etc. Working with partners, the team members will then choose one of five products in this assignment to show what they have learned: a PowerPoint presentation, a three-fold travel brochure, a mobile, a game or game board, or a map on poster board. To meet Writing Across the Curriculum goals, a two-page report on what they learned in the project is also required.

My students asked me to explain Kwanzaa recently. I decided to write this assignment to guide the process. "Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Life and Heritage" is a Common Core-ready reading assignment and critical thinking activity. It is intended for upper elementary and middle school students. Consider using it in reading, language arts, or geography class. It is quite flexible! Students will read a two-page passage that explains aspects about the holiday. They will then complete ten questions related to the reading. First, they must use the reading (or a dictionary) to define seven vocabulary words. Some of which are "Tier Two" and "Tier Three" vocabulary words. (If you are not familiar, the "tiers" refer to language objectives in the Common Core standards.) They will also answer three critical thinking questions in sentence form.

This 50-page visual dictionary/workbook assignment gives students an opportunity to learn up to 50 landforms and bodies of water in a fun, completely visual way. Give your students the 21st geography skills they will need in an increasingly "globalized" world. Students must define each geography term, list examples, and then provide a photograph for each. The nice aspect about this assignment is that it is fully customizable to your students' abilities and needs. You may not need all 50 pages, but you can always mix-and-match to fit your curriculum. Let's imagine you are introducing landforms and bodies of water to elementary school students: you might choose ten basic terms from this workbook to teach.

Just in time for those snowy winter months: "How hard is it to predict snow?" is a Common Core-ready reading assignment and critical thinking activity. It is intended for upper elementary and middle school students. Consider using it in reading, language arts, science, or geography class. It is quite flexible! Students will read a two-page passage that explains why forecasting snowfall is no easy process. They will then complete ten questions related to the reading. First, they must use the reading (or a dictionary) to define seven vocabulary words. Some of which are "Tier Two" and "Tier Three" vocabulary words. (If you are not familiar, the "tiers" refer to language objectives in the Common Core standards.) They will also answer three critical thinking questions in sentence form. There are no multiple choice or true-false questions here. I want my students to really use their noggins to succeed on this assignment!

Would you like to enliven your science lesson with a fun, challenging writing project? The Rainforest Deforestation RAFT Writing Project contains a RAFT writing project for the social studies or science classroom. This project may be used as a creative research project or as a summarizing assignment to end a unit of study on the rainforests. What is a RAFT, you might ask? RAFT is an acronym for a powerful writing strategy that provides rigor, flexibility, and variety. RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. A RAFT can be implemented in all content areas, thus making it an excellent Writing Across the Curriculum resource. Young writers might pursue one of several genres of writing (expository, narrative, descriptive, argumentative or persuasive) to create one of several products (letter, television commercial, diary entry, etc.).

This is a 6-page packet addressing the movement theme of geography. Students will read a short passage introducing the concept of movement and then label the locations of the world's greatest banana producers on a blank map. They will then plot the route they think a Mexican banana producer might use to transport their crops to a grocer in the student's community. Last, an enrichment essay assignment requires students to research a top banana-producing country to learn more about the country's process of production, its production history, and the economic impact of banana production.

The Flags of the World matching assignment packet requires students to match up the names of countries with their respective flags. The assignments come complete with separate name banks, which you can use (or withhold) depending on how challenging you would like to make the assignment. Answer keys are also included. There are eleven worksheets in this packet. These sheets include two Africa sheets, two Asia sheets, one Australia and Oceania sheet two Europe sheets, one North America, one South America sheet, and two sheets that allow students to test their knowledge of flags of countries from all over the world. This is a full-color assignment that would be great to introduce a new continent of study in a geography unit, to test students' abilities to conduct quick research, or to leave with a substitute teacher.

Are you tired of the same old geography worksheets? Your students are, too! Here is a project to keep them engaged while learning about location, population sizes, and simple logistics. Rock & Pop(ulation) is a collaborative assignment asking students to imagine they are part of a very successful musical act: a rock band, an indie outfit, a country group, or a rap collective. They must plan a tour to play for their thousands of fans. Students must work collaboratively – in groups of three or four – to “route” the tour correctly. They must play municipalities (i.e. cities) with a population size of at least 50,000 based on reported data. They must also be sure that the cities their band schedules to play from night-to-night are not too far apart. In this assignment, the logistics of a tour require large buses of equipment to move from city-to-city with enough time to set up the stage, lighting, instruments, and other equipment before the show.

In this project, students will design a walk-through aquarium full of exhibits containing their favorite marine mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and more! The challenge is that they must design their aquariums to scale. Thus, one inch on the map might represent 50 feet in their aquariums. I have taught map scale in several ways over the years, using worksheet after worksheet, to introduce the concept and allow students to practice it. I used political maps, highway maps, physical maps, and more, but I felt like I needed a project to allow my students more hands-on, critical thinking exercise to learn the concept. Recently, I developed this short project to give students just that. Included in this packet are: a brief teacher's guide, a step-by-step set of instructions including notes and a materials list, three sample maps, and a rubric for easy grading.

Here's a fun, challenging way to teach global awareness and one of the five themes of geography: place. The "A-to-Z Countries" and "A-to-Z World Cities" assignments require students to find a country or world city for each letter of the alphabet. These are great, flexible assignments that you can leave with a substitute teacher or to be used on a regular learning day. I have used them both ways. You simply need a world political map (with well-labeled countries) or Internet access for quick reference to sites like Google.com or KidRex.org. I have included the student assignment sheets and two lists of possible answers. Your students will really enjoy this assignment. Mine certainly have over the years!

What’s on the Menu? is one of my favorite ways of introducing my students to different cultures around the world and begin thinking critically about how people interact with their environments and vice versa. What better way to do so than with food? Here is what is expected of students in this assignment: Through an intensive, research-based study, students will learn about cultural similarities and differences around the world, particularly the foods people eat. The final project may provide a unique and fascinating study of the geography, history, economic, religious, and cultural factors that influence cuisine around the world. This assignment works best when tied to a map study or long-range unit of study that allows students to see how people influence their environments and how their environments influence them. The project should require students to provide thoughtful answers to questions about how, why, and where culinary interests develop. This packet contains the following: •A universal menu template that students can use to research ANY country’s cuisine. It is color-heavy, and if your school or classroom budget does not allow printing of heavy images, I have provided an alternative that will require less ink and copier toner. •The aforementioned printer-friendly menu template for any international menu. I have also included several individualized menus for the following nations: Brazil, France, Greece, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, and Thailand. •Three lesson extension ideas. •A rubric you may consider using to evaluate the project.

This assignment is titled "Let's Explore Canada! Use a Map to Find Canadian Provinces, Territories, Cities, Landforms, and Bodies of Water." This assignment includes 20 questions that require students to analyze a map of Canada for boundaries and borders, major cities, landforms, and bodies of water. Here are two sample questions: "Which river forms part of the border between Ontario and the American state of New York?" and "What is the name of Canada's southernmost province?" I also included two basic mapping assignments: students must label maps of the provinces and territories, and the provincial and territorial capital cities. This would make a great introduction to elementary students preparing to study Canada for the first time. It would also work well in any higher elementary or middle school classroom as map skills are still critical needs in these areas. You might even consider it a "substitute assignment" and leave it for a substitute teacher on a day you are away from the classroom. This assignment works well as an individual assignment or as a partner assignment.