"Without geography, you're nowhere"
We teach a language. We teach English which is language known, studied and spoken in many countries in the world. In some countries English is the first and official language, in other countries it has been chosen as a Lingua Franca and spoken as a primary language even though it might not be the language of the natives.
Being that the English language is so commonly known and spoken, it may different from country to country. Some words might be different but most of all the accents are different. That is why it is important when learning a language to listen to as many different accents as possible and try to get used to them.
The good thing is.. with so many different accents even if you may mispronounce a word you can be sure that somewhere in the world that is the correct pronunciation! This is what I always tell my students to motivate them and encourage them!
Teaching a language is not only about grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.
Many times we take things for granted. We start talking about England and London to primary school children but.... do we ever stop to see whether they actually know where England and London are situated? Sometimes we think that primary school children are too young ( especially in their first years) to learn about different countries when they have not studied their own country first. To some extent that might be true, but this does not mean we should not try. Maybe we could try with games.
We all know Google Earth. It is easy to use and it catches the children's attention as they can see the world getting bigger and smaller. It is wonderful to be used with an interactive board with the children moving the world around.
There are thousands of resources online about this topic and we might get lost in the web or deviate from our focus here which is not a CLIL lesson about Geography.
We are simply trying to foster our students' spacial knowledge so that they will know where the English speaking countries are situated. And we are trying to do it while having fun. So how about a PUZZLE?
I bought these puzzles online on Amazon and I have to say my students loved them!
An other game that I have played in my classes is a simple game which requires one blindfolded student having to guess and indicate a country on the map while following an other student's directions.
This is the BLINDFOLDED GEOGRAPHY GAME.
The map was clean and with no names so that even the other students had to concentrate and try to remember where the different countries where.
An other thing which is also possible and easy to do in a classroom is the POST IT GAME on a map. We all have maps in our classroom so... why not write different country names, put them randomly on a map and then ask the students to place the right post it note on the right country?
These are just some ideas, some games that I have tried in my classes over the years and that worked for me and for my students.
Here are a few links to further resources on the net.
LARRY FERLAZZO Geography games
MICHELLE HENRY Geography
Thank you,
Miss Alex
No comments