Outline. This plan hasn't been tried in a classroom yet. If you run it, tell us how it went.
Lines drawn with a ruler
Why some borders run dead straight across the desert, and what the people who drew them were thinking about.
- Level
- Grades 6–12
- Time
- 45 min
- Subjects
- Geography, World history
Students will
- Tell a border that follows the land (a river, a ridge) from one drawn on a map.
- Explain, from a primary-source-based article, why a straight line was chosen.
- Find straight-line borders on a world map without being told where to look.
Lesson flow
- 5′
Warm-up
Project a Borderline puzzle and have the class trace the missing border together. Ask what made it easy or hard to guess.
Open Borderline → - 15′
Read
Pairs read the Iraq–Jordan article. Each pair writes down who drew the line, when, and what they cared about more than the land itself.
- 10′
Map hunt
On the globe, students find three other straight-line borders and note which continent each is on.
Open Globe Atlas → - 10′
Play
Border Run in pairs: cross the map one neighbour at a time and call out every straight border on the route.
Open Border Run → - 5′
Wrap-up
Exit ticket: one reason a border might be straight, and one problem a straight border can cause.
Discussion
- Who gets to decide where a border goes? Who wasn't asked?
- Is a straight line fairer or less fair than one that follows a river?
- What would you need to know to draw a border between two places today?
Going further
Compare with the Iraq–Saudi Arabia article, which once had a shared neutral zone between the two countries.