Map Game
Ed Edgar

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Put up a big map of your home country on the blackboard. Make teams according to whatever method you use to make teams according to. Show the students a big arrow with the name of a place on it (eg. Liverpool). They have to try to put the arrow in the right place on the map. Each team gets to ask one question about where the place is [eg. "Is Liverpool in Scotland?"], then has twenty seconds to find it on the map. If they can't find the place, pass the arrow on to the next team, who also get one question and twenty seconds. Simple really. - Once they've got the hang of it, have one of the kids/ teams pick a place on the map. Then they have to answer the questions from the other teams, and you can take a well-earned rest.

NB: To introduce the kind of questions they can ask, ("Is it in the north or south?", "Is it near the sea?", "Is it a big city?" etc.) demonstrate first on a map of Japan or Tochigi-ken. (Warning: Your kids' Japanese geography is probably worse than yours.) Pretend you want to go and visit a friend but you don't know where their town is: "My friend Dave lives in Aomori." [Look all over Japan and fail to find Aomori.] "Is Aomori in Honshu?" [Hopefully they'll say "Yes," and you can confine your search to Honshu.] "Is it in the north or the south" [Look around the north of Honshu for a while.] "Is it near the sea?" [Now we're down to the north coast of Honshu] etc. When bored, "find" Aomori.

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