It’s June…and HOT. No one wants to be cooped up inside a stuffy classroom with no A/C, especially when motivation is already at an all-time low.

One way I beat the heat and change things up a bit is to take my classes outside in the fresh air to practice the geography of Spanish-speaking countries.

Here’s How I Do It

Materials:

• Sidewalk chalk

• Paper maps (typically these are the ones kids have completed in class and then practiced on www.seterra.com)

Step 1: Divide students into groups and assign regions to each group. This is typically how I do groups of 4 but occasionally I have kids duplicate a particular region. Giving each group member a different color chalk can help ensure they divide up the task evenly.

• North America

• The Caribbean

• Central America

• South America

• Spain and Equatorial Guinea

Step 2: Have everyone grab a piece of chalk or a bucket of sidewalk chalk. Groups work together to draw huge maps of the regions on the pavement. The maps should be big enough to be labeled.

Step 3: Gamify! Once done, kids gather in their groups. I assign each group a number. When I call the name of a country and two group numbers, they race to be the first ones to stand in or next to that country. This can be modified to play by letter of last name, etc.

Extension Activities

Here are some additional interactive games you could play outdoors after drawing maps of Spanish-speaking countries on the ground.

Country Trivia Toss Have students toss bean bags underhand onto a country you call out. If they land it, they get to answer a trivia question about that country's geography, capital, famous landmarks, etc. for a point.

Guess That Geographic Feature Bring photos or Google imagery printouts showing different geographic features from Spanish countries like mountains, rivers, coasts, etc. Hold them up one by one and have students race to where that feature is represented on the drawn map.

Explora la Frontera Line students up and call out a country. They have to jump from wherever they are to land inside the borders of that nation. Great for learning to identify countries!

¿Dónde Está? Relays Divide students into teams, each with a corresponding country drawn on the map. Call out geographic clues like "Find the mountain range that runs along the western edge of Mexico" etc. The first team to relay together and put a hand on that drawn feature wins a point.

Capital-to-Capital Road Trip Split into teams and assign each a starting and ending capital city in different Spanish countries. Using chalk (or if you have matchbox cars, they’d LOVE the novelty of it!) they have to "drive" and draw a path between the two, making turns around geographic obstacles like mountains and rivers along the way. Whichever team's path is shortest wins.

The movement and competition make learning the geography much more engaging as an end-of-the-year activity!

Wishing you all the best,

Catherine

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