How to teach the countries of Asia

Grade 3 to Grade 6

Asia is the largest continent with around fifty countries, so the only workable approach is the same as Europe: split it into regions (East, South, Southeast and Central Asia, plus the Middle East) and learn one region at a time on a blank map, rather than treating fifty countries as fifty separate facts. A blank map to label is the core practice tool.

How to teach it

1. Start with the regions and their rough positions before naming individual countries, so the map has a frame.
2. Learn one region at a time on a blank map: point, name, then write, and only add the next region once the first is secure.
3. Use the giants and the coasts as anchors: China and India dominate the centre, Japan and the Philippines sit as island chains, the long peninsulas of Southeast Asia point south.
4. Pair each country with its capital once the shapes are secure, and watch the traps where the capital is not the best known city (Islamabad not Karachi, Ankara not Istanbul).
5. Handle the edges honestly: Russia and Turkey sit in both Europe and Asia, and the small Gulf and city states (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Singapore, Brunei) are too small to label on a whole-continent map and are just named.

Common mistakes

• Muddling the small, crowded countries of the Middle East and the Caucasus with each other.
• Confusing the five Central Asian 'stans', Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
• Mixing up the Southeast Asian mainland neighbours, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.
• Forgetting that Russia is only partly in Asia, and that a country and its capital can have quite different names.