Fantasy Geopolitics

Getting students engaged with current events can be tricky, but this game Fantasy Geopolitics is a great tool to get them excited about reading the news.  I used this site with 8th graders last year, and current event Fridays became a class favorite.   This game works a lot like a fantasy football team, but instead of creating a team of players, students create a team of countries.  The more their countries appear in the news, the more points their team receives.

Fantasy Geopolitics works well with teams or with individuals, and it encourages students to follow the news so they can make smart trades each week.  This game teaches students to pay attention to international events so that they can make educated predictions about where news will spread.

Ukraine Crisis and Foreign Policy

We're studying the President's role in foreign policy and recently covered the different ways the US interacts with foreign countries.  We discussed the following:

• Militarily
• Foreign Aid
• Sanctions
• Embargos
• Advice
• Treaties

We also discussed the various reasons the US would want to engage in foreign policy.  Some of the reasons discussed were:

• Promote economic growth
• Foster democracy abroad
• Protect national security and interests
• Protect human rights

The crisis in Ukraine is a great current event to get students to try and apply this knowledge.  I created this simple activity to reinforce these concepts above.

Lesson

First we reviewed the crisis with these YouTube clips to get an understanding of the conflict:

Why Russia is invading Ukraine, explained in 2 minutes
Why are Russia and Ukraine Fighting?
How Powerful Is Russia?

Following the video clips I had students work in groups of 4 to discuss the possible actions the US could take to address the crisis.  I had groups use this discussion guide to help guide their group work:

Discussion Guide