Click and Learn

Relay Race Around the World

Note: This is an excellent exercise for students who are in upper grades or students in the lower grades who want to practice for the Geography Bee

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES (Objectives)
 Given a time-slot of 8 minutes, teams of students will use teamwork and load-sharing as they recite Continents and Oceans, States and Capitals, Countries of the major continents.

FIVE STEP LESSON PLAN

Set Induction/Anticipatory Set:
 Ask the students if they know what a relay race is. Ask what activities a relay race might be used for? Explain that the Pony Express was a very famous relay race in American history.

Instruction/Teaching to the Objective:
 Tell the students that we will form teams to recite 279 geographical features of the world, but no one person will have to do it all. Each of the 8 students will be required one of the following: 1) Continents and Oceans; 2) States; 3) Capitals; 4) countries of Central America and then South America; 5) Europe; 6) Africa; 7) Asia and 8) the Middle East.

Guided Practice:
 Devise a fair method to divide the class into groups of 8 students each. Members of each group will determine which part of the Relay they can handle (one will recite the 50 states, one will do countries Africa and so forth). Tell the students to work among themselves to determine which student will recite which part of the relay.

Independent/Group Practice:
 Let the members of each group practice their parts for a few minutes and then select group #1 and 'time' them as the take turns reciting their portion of the 'relay.' Total Time Elapsed will be the 'score' of the group. Repeat this process for each group.

Closure:
 Explain that every person is important when we work as a team and that it is important to let each member perform the task that they excell at in order for the entire team to succeed.

EVALUATION:
 This should be a fun activity as students learn the importance of teamwork and load-sharing.

RESOURCES AND MATERIALS:
 A stopwatch. Will take one class period.

Note: You can vary the number of students in each group and the number of topics that they recite.

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