"GEOGRAPHY: PASSPORT TO THE WORLD
INTERNATIONAL FAIR
INTRODUCTION:
Here's a chance to highlight geography in your class, your school, and your community-and have a great time while you're at it. Convert your classroom or your entire school into a fanfare of "countries," with students representing peoples and their cultures around the world. Then, on the last day of Geography Awareness Week, hold an international fair and include parents, other members of the community, and the media. Get a lively press release out ahead of time. The message for geography as a passport to the world will fly far and wide.
MATERIALS:
To make passport stamps: potatoes, paring knives, stamp pads or paint-or other materials for other kinds of stamps.
PROCEDURE:
Divide the class into small groups. Have each group choose a country. (If you recruit other classes to participate in this activity, each classroom can represent one country.) Ask the students to research the culture of their country during the course of the week, and prepare to show aspects of the culture on the day of the fair. Some ideas for country booths:
• Wear national dress
• Play indigenous music
• Display local textiles
• Stage language demonstrations and lessons
• Perform folk dances
• Show official currency
• Set out guidebooks, travel brochures, maga-zines, and newspapers
• Demonstrate games
• Display pictures of political figures and national heroes
• Serve local food
• Invite someone who has visited that country or lived there to show slides and give a talk
• Paint the country flag on tagboard or on a bedsheet
Have each group of students design an official passport stamp for their
country to be used in other students' passports. If possible, have the class examine actual passport stamps, or use the ones on this page as models. Possible means of making stamps: Carve the stamp from a large potato sliced in half; assemble a stamp from rubber letters and numbers; decorate small white adhesive labels and cut them into official shapes.
Appoint immigration officers to stamp passports as tourists enter the countries, and designate tourist information officers to answer questions
about the country. On the day of the fair or the last day of Geography
Awareness Week--divide each country group so that the students can take turns running their country and visiting other countries. The students should use the passports made in the activity on page 3 (see passport below) for stamped entry into other countries.Invite students from other rooms to visit¬carrying their own passports, of course. Though the fair takes place on the last day of the week, the activity will work best if students select their countries on the first day and devote time daily to preparation. You may want to start preparing for this activity before the week begins." (double click on each of the two images below to enlarge & print.)
"Passport Assembly:
Photocopy the two 8 1/2 x 11" passport templates at right (above) and distribute one set to each student. Have the students assemble their passports in the following way:
A. Cut the two 8 1/2" x 11" pages apart along the dotted line if they were photocopied together.
B. Place each of the two pages, blank side down, on a flat surface in front of you so that you can read the words "PASSPORT" and "Vital Statistics" correctly.
c. Fold each page in half, across the center, with type facing outward. The words "PASSPORT" and "Vital Statistics" should now read across near the top of each fold.
D. Fold each paper again, like a book, so that the words "PASSPORT" and "Vital Statistics" are on the covers.
E. Insert the section with "Vital Statistics" into the center of the "PASSPORT" section and staple together along the edge of the spine-so that the staple ends are on the back side of the booklet. "
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