A fun CI map activity

I’ve done a CI map activity for many years – it’s a fun one that confuses students until they “get it” – and once they do, they love messing with the other students who haven’t caught on yet. I started it way back when we still used overhead projectors and now I do it with the smartboard. It leads to lots of repetitions and CI.

Basically, it’s a lesson about the geography of France. I put up a blank page on the smartboard and point at the center part while telling them “this is France!” – and I make a vague hexagon shape. I point at the part where Paris would be, and tell them “this is Paris!.” We do lots of questions – is this France? is this England? is this America? What is this? Yes, it’s Paris! I add things, a little at a time – the Seine, Marseilles, Spain, the English Channel, England, Germany…eventually we have the whole thing pretty much memorize and the kids have a bunch of repetitions so they are picking up not only the geography, but the language as well!

Reactions to the CI map activity

I’ll always have a kid or two who is confused – why is the teacher pointing at a blank screen? What does she mean, “this is FRANCE” – everyone can see that it’s a white board! That’s when I had out the copies of the map to each student so they can have one of their own. Aha, they figure – now she’s going to give us an actual map! Of course, the copies I hand out are just blank pieces of paper as well. But then I tell them to look at their maps and find the things as we go over them.

At this point most of them have realized that this CI map activity was much more helpful than just giving them a map because they have this map in their heads. This is THEIR map. It can’t be lost just because the paper was lost. Eventually, we do look at an actual map – and they understand exactly where everything is, because it’s exactly where it should be according to the map they have in their heads. It’s a lot of fun and the next day when students who were absent come in and ask for missing work, I just give them a blank paper and tell them to get notes from their classmates.

The other students – of course – give their copy of the ‘map’ to the absent kids, who are now thoroughly confused. A good follow-up to this lesson is a discussion of Paris. I want a lot of repetition, but also I want it to be interesting. I made a comprehensible input lesson about this topic with super-easy vocabulary and very basic grammar. You can see the lesson here. I’ll do the PowerPoint with lots of circling, then move on to the retells and the comprehension worksheets. I might also do a CI map activity for Paris just like the map of France!