FANgeopolitics Resources
*Everything's at fan.school now and Members have new games and features available there: It's more like daily fantasy sports (where anyone can pick anything simultaneously) than the snake draft you might be used to. See "How to play real-world games" for how it works: You'll just need to subscribe and create a Space (rather than a league) to add Games to.
In the old snake draft, it was nearly impossible to win if you weren't able to select the best countries: Now everyone has an equal chance through drafting and adjusting their lineup daily (students can still swap countries anytime). As educators ourselves, we also know "to Learn, Students need to DO something" and we were always inspired by the additional projects and activities teachers had players doing alongside games. Check out trends (and see student work) by clicking on the History & Geography badge.
What a Draft Might Look Like:
smartphone
research
individual + group research
team uniforms
international buffet
storyboard research
student drafting a country
More Ideas from Teachers Like You!
These games fit especially well with National Council for the Social Studies curriculum standards, as well as the Common Core English Language Arts Reading: Informational Text and Literacy in History/Social Studies standards. Use it to get students writing and start relevant, authentic discussions and debates.
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Daily or Weekly current events updates and discussions.
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Daily Warm Up before diving into course content.
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A Civics teacher uses it to help students become more aware about what's happening around the world before their unit on foreign policy and the essential question: What's the role of the U.S. in the world?
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A World Geography teacher had students draft countries from the continents they were studying each new unit every 2-3 weeks to become more familiar with current events and geopolitics in each one.
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A middle school Humanities teacher used the game as a way to keep her students engaged in learning outside of her every-other-day class and utilized resources like Newsela to find leveled reading content for younger students.
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A U.S. History teacher had students draft modern-day World War I and Cold War countries to examine the legacies of those conflicts while studying their history.
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A World History teacher has students draft countries from each part of the world they're studying and gears class activities around how history explains what's happening in each country now and why.
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A Sociology teacher uses it in her course to cover the contemporary world issues content standards.
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A Media Studies and Journalism teacher uses it in her course to examine global news coverage, bias, and reasons why some countries are featured more than others in the news.
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A Global Cultures teacher has students draft the lowest scoring countries to help make students aware of lesser-known regions of the world so they can study development and culture. Students that get the lowest scores win!
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An AP Human Geography teacher uses it to engage her students in each of the course's 5 themes (location, human/environment interaction, regions, place, movement) and has students find news articles related to each theme for their countries.
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A World Religions teacher has his students draft countries from each part of the world where they're studying religious trends and has students incorporate religion in news-article finds.
Other content sources we love that might be fantastic for your classroom too:
