Resources for Educators

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how the Mercator projection distorts country sizes
• Compare actual sizes of countries near poles vs equator
• Develop critical thinking about map representations

Activities:

1. Opening Discussion (10 min): Ask students to rank these by size: Greenland, Africa, Russia, Brazil. Record their answers.
2. Interactive Exploration (20 min): Using TrueCountrySizes, have students:
   • Drag Greenland to the equator and observe the change
   • Compare Africa's true size to other continents
   • Move countries from their original position to different latitudes
3. Data Collection (10 min): Students record size changes for 5 countries when moved to different latitudes
4. Reflection (5 min): Revisit the opening question. How did their perceptions change?

Assessment:

Students write a paragraph explaining why Greenland appears so large on traditional maps and describe one real-world implication of this distortion.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare relative sizes of continents accurately
• Understand scale and proportion in geography
• Identify major countries within continents

Activities:

1. Prediction (5 min): Students predict how many times Australia fits into Africa
2. Discovery (15 min): Using the tool to:
   • Overlay Australia on Africa multiple times
   • Compare Europe to other continents
   • Find countries that are surprisingly similar in size
3. Group Challenge (10 min): Teams compete to find the most surprising size comparison

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the scale of US states relative to world countries
• Develop spatial reasoning skills
• Connect local to global geography

Activities:

1. Local Connection (5 min): Students identify their state and guess which countries are similar in size
2. Exploration (20 min): Compare various US states to countries:
   • Texas vs France
   • California vs Japan
   • Alaska vs Mexico
   • Montana vs Germany
3. Create a Reference Chart (10 min): Students create a chart matching 10 US states to similarly-sized countries
4. Share Findings (5 min): Groups share their most interesting discoveries