From flags to capital cities, geography is one of the most visual topics. There are many fantastic quizzes and geography games designed to enhance learning for students of all ages.
But which games are worth your time, and how can they help you add a whole new dimension to your lessons today?
Read on to find a list of some of the best geography games for interactive displays, perfect for use in the classroom. We have covered games and quizzes suitable for students KS2 to KS4 studying for their GCSEs, so you can quickly find the best experiences for your students!
Geography games for KS2
Key stage 2 is an important development period for any student. Although the topics are far from difficult, keeping younger children engaged in their lessons can be hard.
There is a selection of geography applications suited for KS2 students, from naming the most populous countries to filling in a blank map. Here are just a few of the fantastic games available to KS2 teachers!
Geo Touch
Homework can be a great way to help your KS2 students revise everything they have learned in their classes, but it can also be frustrating. Geo Touch offers you a way to maintain your student’s knowledge without the usual stress caused by homework.
As its name suggests, Geo Touch is an educational app designed for touch-screen devices. KS2 students will be challenged to find countries of our world based on the flags shown or find the country that matches the given outline.
Thankfully, this application isn’t complicated, and most of the quizzes featured are extremely accessible. The developers are even constantly updating this application with new content, so you won’t need to worry about running out of quizzes anytime soon!
Geo Challenge
Geo Challenge is an educational trivia game perfectly designed to help KS2 students learn about our world. It offers a selection of 4 challenging categories: flags, capital cities, landmarks and country borders.
All four categories offer a unique way to help improve your geography lessons. Select the right flag for the highlighted country or challenge your students to find the country borders of the most populous countries in the world.
Each quiz offered by Geo Challenge lasts for 60 seconds, with the final score being based on how fast your students manage to get the right answer. You can even change the difficulty of each category to offer experiences suited to all key stages!
I Am Learning: KS2 Geography
Designed for kids ages 7 to 11, this interactive geography app is an excellent addition to any classroom. Offering over 1100 unique questions, the I Am Learning: KS2 Geography covers every topic a KS2 student will need to know.
Alongside these questions, you can also access a range of default templates to help your students revise. These templates can even be edited to suit the current topic you cover in class!
I Am Learning: KS2 Geography also offers a selection of educational games that you can load onto an interactive display and get the entire class to take part in.
Geography Snap
If you don’t want to rely on an online service or app that you need to download, then consider checking out Geography Snap. This classroom game can easily be customised to suit your curriculum, and all you need is a whiteboard and a few lolly sticks!
To play this game, you will first need to load up a specific country or continent map onto your interactive display. This could be Europe, Central America or any other large landmass you are currently teaching.
Next, you will need to write the countries, capitals or regions for your landmass. For example, if you are covering Europe, make a list of every country in Europe and write these down onto your lolly sticks – on 3 of these sticks, write the word ‘SNAP’.
Each student will then be given 60 seconds to pull a stick out of the container and mark where the country or state is on the whiteboard. The goal is to see how many countries, capital cities or regions each student can get in 60 seconds!
However, if they pull a SNAP stick out, they will need to wipe off all the marked locations and start from scratch!
Geography games for KS3
KS3 geography aims to build on all the students’ knowledge gathered during KS2 and improve their understanding of the world. The content tends to be a little more complicated than in earlier school years, but students will love learning about our planet with the right games.
We have covered a few of these games below to help you find an easy and accessible way to bring excitement back to the classroom. All of these games can be loaded onto an interactive whiteboard or a laptop, perfect for capturing the attention of your entire class!
Lizard Point Geography Quizzes
Quizzes are an extremely fun way to learn about a range of topics. Lizard Point Geography Quizzes offer everything you could need to teach your students about our world’s countries and capital cities.
From South America to Africa, these popular quizzes cover almost any geography topic, so you can quickly tailor your lesson to suit the curriculum.
Some of the best quizzes available on this educational site offer a blank map that your students will need to populate with countries. This is a superb way to get the most out of an interactive display!
Stack the Countries
Stack the Countries is a mixture of geography quizzes combined with the game Tetris. This innovative educational game will help you teach your students about all the countries in the world.
In a game of Stack the Countries, you will be given a clue or prompt regarding a specific country. You must then choose the correct country using these hints. Once the correct country has been selected, you will be given that country as a piece to drop onto a Tetris board.
The first player to get to the marked line using the countries they have earned will be declared the winner!
GeoGuessr
GeoGuessr is a fantastic way to teach KS3 students about the world. This online interactive game places you in a random location using Google street view. You must then figure out where you are by exploring your environment.
As an extra layer to this already fantastic game, you can select from an array of categories to help customise your GeoGuessr experience. Choose to only be placed in capital cities, or choose from a range of countries worldwide.
When bringing GeoGuessr to the classroom, you can either launch it on your interactive display or gather students in groups and let them use their computers or laptops. You can either add a reward for the students or the group that gets the highest score!
Keep in mind that a paid version of GeoGuessr will allow you to play multiple games a day. However, the free online version is still an excellent way to help your students explore the world!
Globe Game
The globe game is a classic way to add an interactive element to your geography classes. All you need for this is a globe and maybe a few sticky labels to cover up the names of countries, capitals or continents.
If you don’t have a globe in your classroom, you can even load up a world map on your interactive whiteboard.
The rules for this game are simple: ask each student to find a specific location on the globe. This could be everything from continents such as South America and Europe to capitals such as Berlin or Addis Ababa. Be sure to customise the globe game to suit your students!
You can even add a competitive element to this traditional game and reward the top 3 students who correctly find the most locations!
Geography games for KS4/GCSE
GCSEs can be stressful for any student, regardless of what they are currently studying. Games and popular quizzes can be an excellent way to not only offer your GCSE students a way to take it easy whilst still offering an easy way to revise the curriculum.
Depending on what your students are currently studying, whether that’s South America or capital cities, there are a range of fun but educational games out there. Spice up your classroom with a few games suitable for KS4 students!
World Geography Games
This collection of World Geography Games can be an excellent tool when teaching KS4 students about the many countries that make up our world. This fantastic app offers your students a blank map covering a specific continent, and they will be challenged to name all of the countries in that continent.
You can also select from a few bonus categories such as volcanoes, the capital city of the highlighted country and even the states of Central America. Map quizzes can be an excellent learning tool to help your students get the best marks in their GCSEs.
These games tend to work best as supporting material instead of teaching your students about a particular topic for the first time. This makes this app a fantastic revision tool that students will appreciate when they are revising!
Maps of Our World
One of the best ways to learn about all the countries found on our planet is through the use of map quizzes. Maps are an important part of geography, so making sure your students know the world map is the best way to establish a strong foundation for GCSE geography.
The Maps of Our World application can be downloaded onto iPhones and iPads, perfect for revising on the go or preparatory work before an exam. Students can even earn achievements by challenging themselves to some of the harder quizzes included in this content pack.
What’s more, this application was designed in collaboration with teachers, so you can be sure that it is designed to be as useful as possible.
If you’re looking for a handy digital application to help enhance your student’s knowledge, check out the Maps of Our World app.
Seterra Geography
With over 400 free map quizzes available in up to 40 languages, Seterra Geography is one of the best ways you can help boost your student’s world knowledge. There are 9 fantastic categories, with bonus anatomy and science, perfect for interactive science lessons.
In terms of geography content, you can access a range of cities, populous countries and map quizzes. Inside each category, you can even select a current difficulty level which offers you a way to adapt each quiz to suit your student’s needs.
The application itself can either be accessed online, perfect for use on an interactive whiteboard or through a mobile application. You can also access a range of printable documents to help teach your class more about the world we live in!
Why should you use games during your geography lessons?
Using games during your geography lessons is an excellent way to help students want to learn more about the world. Most games tend to be interactive and more fun for kids than reading facts from a textbook.
There are many games for you to choose from, so finding one that your classroom will love is easy. You could even create your own games with a little help from your students to cover various topics, including maths!
Whether you choose to bring map quizzes to the classroom or load up GeoGuessr on your interactive whiteboard, your students are sure to appreciate the change in pace.
Other teaching resources from Promethean
Still need a hand putting together your lesson plan? Check out our other interactive whiteboard resources.
- The ultimate list of classroom games
- Our favourite quiz apps for interactive whiteboards
Enhance geography games with interactive displays
Finding innovative ways to teach your class about countries in our world can be challenging. Thankfully, with an interactive display, you can play a host of fantastic games and geography quizzes with your students, enhancing their learning!Here at Promethean, we believe that interactive whiteboards are one of the best tools for creating an engaged classroom with immersive learning opportunities for every subject.. Be sure to check out our range of interactive classroom products to enhance your students learning today. You can even book a free live demo of the Promethean ActivPanel!