Divide students into groups of three or four and give each group a piece of graph paper and a neighborhood map. Explain how maps are oriented with north at the top and created to scale. Have students identify landmarks and locations they can verify. Use rulers, pencils and tape measures to create a map of the classroom. Have students work with appropriate scale and major classroom landmarks.
Log onto cultural and tourism sites to take a virtual trip of the country your students are studying. Check out famous landmarks, the capital and other major locations. On a class world map, have the students locate the area currently under study. Use a more localized map such as a hemisphere or continent map to locate the country.
Using a map that only depicts the country, identify the areas you visited on the field trip with a numbered, colored dot. Below the map or on another sheet of paper, list the capital, landmarks and locations using the numbers on the dots.
Display a world map on your interactive whiteboard. Divide your class into five teams and give each team a buzzer. Call out the name of a country or capital city. The team who buzzes in first gets to point out the location on the world map, earning five points. Give the group five additional points if they can name a significant feature that you choose, such as the country's capital or the name of the country's leader or primary export. Continue playing until one team earns 100 points or until time runs out.
Divide students into groups of four or five. Have the students draw to learn the name of the county they will report on. Give the groups the same list of questions such as the capital of the country, what the people are called, the primary religion, types of local foods, main industries, flora, fauna and geographical features. Provide each group with an atlas and access to information about the country beyond what is found in the textbook.
After a week or two of preparation, have each group do a class presentation on the country. Include visual displays of the people, cities, animals, flag and other topics the groups needed to discover.