The World

Direct students to this page. They've seen the world map many times before, but it bears reflection and contemplation. This world is the only home human beings have ever known (aside from occasional apartments on the moon). The map is not just a record of the way things are, but of how things have developed over time. Get students to engage with the map by asking them questions about it:

• Find where you live.
• Find where you would like to live. Why?
• Find the farthest point you have ever traveled from home. Why did you go there?
• Find the most mysterious place on the planet. Why does it intrigue you?

Point out to students that this map is a Mercator projection, which displays data accurately at the equator but less accurately the closer one gets to the poles. (The problem is displaying a globe on a flat surface.) Show students other map projections and ask how they change their perspective of Earth.

United States

From elementary school, U.S. students have studied this map. Lead them on a scavenger hunt through it:

• Find your state and the city closest to you.
• Find the farthest point away where a relative or friend lives.
• Find a spot you would like to visit sometime. Why?
• Find a state where you would like to cross the border into another country. What country would you visit? Why?
• What state do you think is the coolest? Why?
• What state do you think is the weirdest? Why?

South America

Have students analyze the map on this page, noting the nations and oceans. Then inspire reflection with questions:

• What do you notice about Brazil? (Students may note its huge size, stretching from the equator in the north to well past the Tropic of Capricorn in the south and extending from Peru in the west to the central Atlantic in the east. They also might note that Brazil s dominated by rivers, specifically the Amazon, one of the greatest rivers on Earth. The map does not show [but students should know] that about half of Brazil is the Amazon Rainforest, considered the "lungs of Earth" because of how much carbon dioxide it absorbs and how much oxygen it produces.)
• What do you notice about Argentina? (It extends from the Tropic of Capricorn in the north to Cape Horn in the south. Its climate goes from intense heat and humidity to cold oceans with penguins.)
• What do you notice about Chile? (It is very long and thin, running half the length of South America along the Pacific Ocean. The map doesn't make this clear, but Chile is actually a very mountainous nation, following the Andes, which are formed by the collision of the Pacific and South American plates. One of the driest, highest, and coolest places on the planet is the Atacama Desert in Chile, a barren Mars-like landscape that is treasured by astronomers because of the clear viewing from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array of telescopes.)
• What do you notice about Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana? (All are smaller nations in the tropics. Each has had a turbulent past, again because of local dictators, drug lords, and the exploitative practices of larger nations.)
• If you could travel to any place in South America, where would you go, and why?

Africa

Have students carefully study the map of Africa. Prompt them with questions:

• What do you notice about this continent? (Students may notice that it is huge, much bigger than Europe and the Middle East; it is surrounded by water, with the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Indian Ocean on the east, and the Red Sea on the north east it contains many nations; it extends north of the Tropic of Cancer and south of the Tropic of Capricorn; the nations in the Sahara Desert are large, as are the nations in south and central Africa, but the sub-Saharan nations are smaller; Africa borders Europe and the Middle East.)
• Human beings began in East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt) and spread from there throughout the world. Why might these areas provide a good home for humans? (The major lakes and rivers could support settlements; the north and south ends of the Red Sea allowed crossing into Asia and then into Europe.)
• North Africa has been invaded by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, French, Germans, and the Allies. Why has this area been so hotly contested? (It borders on the Mediterranean Sea and is temperate and fertile, unlike the Saharan lands south of it.)
• Western Africa was shaped by the Triangle Trade (slaves from Africa for cash crops from the New World for manufactured goods from the Old World). Other areas (such as the Congo and South Africa) were shaped by European imperialism. How have these outside influences changed Africa? (They have forced native populations to adopt a European style of government and economy; they have artificially drawn state borders, grouping adversaries in the same nation and splitting other homogenous groups across national boundaries; they have imposed European languages upon the systems of governance and education.)
• Why would Madagascar contain creatures (including "Hobbit" humans) not found anywhere else on the globe? (It is a large island isolated off the African Coast in the Indian Ocean.)
• If you could travel to any place in Africa, where would you go? Why?

Asia

Have students study the map of Asia. Use the following questions to guide their thinking:

• What do you notice about Asia? (Students may note it is huge; it has part of Russia and all of China and India in it; it has many small nations in the Middle East and in the South Pacific.)
• Asia holds more than half of the world's population (4.5 billion people, with 1.4 billion in China and nearly that many in India). Why are these areas so populous? (India and China both have been cradles of civilization, with thousands of years of occupation; both are fertile areas with excellent river systems to facilitate civilization; both are traditionally rural societies [which favor many children]; both have worked hard to industrialize and digitize their economies; both have religions [Hinduism and Buddhism] that have valued large families.)
• Russia extends from Europe in the west to Alaska in the east. Why is it less populous than the much-smaller China and India? (Russia is generally cold, with much of its territory north of the Arctic Circle; the lower latitudes are landlocked and subject to the extremes of summer and winter as well as desert conditions.)
• What do you notice about the South Pacific? (Many small island nations extend between Asia and Australia.)
• In 2004, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck the northwestern tip of Sumatra and unleashed a tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean and killed more than 260,000 people in 14 countries on the continents of Asia and Africa. What can you infer about this event from the map? (Sumatra must lie on a major fault line between the Pacific and Indian Ocean plates; tsunamis can travel thousands of miles across open ocean; many people live along the coasts of the Indian Ocean; the power of the Earth dwarfs the power of people living on it.)
• If you could travel to any place in Asia, where would you go? Why?

Index to World Maps

Teach your students how to use this index.

• Latitude lines run east and west, with the equator at 0°. Lines above the equator are marked in degrees north, and lines below it are marked in degrees south.
• Longitude lines run north and south, with the line through Greenwich, England, at 0°. Lines to the left are marked in degrees west, and lines to the right are marked in degrees east.

To find a nation, students can look for the convergence of longitude and latitude lines on whatever map shows that convergence.