Sign up free

Geography quizzes: hotspots on maps, graphs and case studies

A geography teacher's guide to quizzes built round the map: fair click-on-the-map questions, scale, contours, graphs, and a ten-question rivers quiz with its key.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · By subject and level · · 13 min read

What should geography quizzes test besides the names of places?

Geography quizzes for ages 11 to 18 and first-year courses should test more than the names of places. Ask pupils to find a place on an unlabelled map, to read scale, contours and a graph, to put a process in order and to use a case study. A click on the map, a number, an order and a short answer cover them.

A quiz that asks only for names finds out who has learned the names. It cannot show whether a pupil can find a delta on a blank map, turn 4 centimetres into kilometres, or read a storm off a graph.

Geography quizzes for ages 11 to 18, and for a first-year course, can put the map at the centre and ask for all of these. EdProcto publishes this guide and builds every shape in the table below, starting with Find it on the map: a click, marked against a box that only you see.

Each study was read at its source on 10 October 2026.

What should a geography quiz test besides naming places?

Five things: where a place is, what a map says about distance and height, what a graph says, how a process runs, and what a case study shows. Each has a shape that fits.

What is tested Shape in EdProcto, with its line among the templates
Where a place is Find it on the map: "Click a place on a map."
A point on a graph Hotspot: "Click the right part of an image."
A distance, a height, a reading Estimate: "A number scored by how close it is."
A choice about a figure Compare two images: "Which of two images meets a criterion."
Scales and terms Matching pairs: "Items in two columns, joined up."
Landforms in their classes Sort into groups: "Items dropped into named groups."
A process Sequence the process: "The steps of a process, in order."
A term or a place name Fill in the blank: "One missing word or phrase in a sentence."
A case study put to use Short answer: "One to three sentences, graded against a model answer or a rubric."
A decision that unfolds Case study: "One scenario unfolds across the questions; each answer reveals more."

The first eight are marked by rule, a short answer by you, and each question of a case study as its own kind. Label the parts and Map region, where the student outlines an area on the map, are marked by rule too. Each shape has its guide: hotspots, matching, ordering, sorting and case studies.

What does research say about maps, place knowledge and map skills?

A map is learned better by being tested on it, knowledge of where places are shifts more than it falls, and scale, contours and graphs each hide a difficulty a question can aim at. Abstracts were read unless a line says otherwise.

  • A tested map is better learned. In Carpenter and Pashler (2007), 50 people each learned two maps, one by study and one by tests that showed it with a feature missing. Maps drawn 30 minutes later were better for the tested one.
  • The gain reaches new questions. In two experiments by Rohrer et al. (2010), fourth and fifth graders learned to assign regions or cities to places on a map. A day later testing had helped on the practised task and, slightly more, on harder questions (no numbers given).
  • Place-location knowledge moves with the times. Hennerdal (2016) gave outline maps to 1,124 students in a Swedish town in 2013 and compared 1,200 tested there in 1968: better on continents and oceans, worse on countries in Europe.
  • Contours hold two skills. Atit et al. (2016), read in full, separate reading the height a line stands for from seeing the shape of the land. Of 272 undergraduate women in four groups of 68, those given no instruction scored 46% on a contour map test; those taught by pointing at and tracing the lines, 62%.
  • Scale is misread by its name. Most of the American undergraduates Kim (2014) questioned took a large-scale map to be one that shows a large area (no number given).
  • Novices read the frame of a graph. Atkins and McNeal (2018) tracked the eyes of novice undergraduates and geoscience graduates on climate graphs: novices attended more to the question, title and axes and described general trends, graduates to the data and its specific patterns (no numbers given).

Does knowing where places are help with the rest of geography?

Ofsted (2021), reviewing research for England's school inspectorate, argues that it does: a pupil who cannot place things cannot use where a place is to explain why a process turns out differently there, and fluent recall spares working memory. That is a reasoned case; we found no study testing whether pupils who place countries well do better in the rest of the subject.

After 50 research visits to schools from December 2022 to May 2023, Ofsted (2023) found knowledge about location strong in most and wrote: "The weakest form of geographical knowledge in almost all schools is procedural knowledge". Its example is the choropleth map, seldom practised until fluent.

What an examining body publishes

AQA (2016), in section 3.4 of its GCSE Geography specification, says the skills are assessed in all three written papers: four and six-figure grid references, distances at several scales, gradient, contour and spot height, cross-sections, and graphs from population pyramids to flow-line maps.

How do you write a fair click-on-the-map question?

Ask for one thing that has an edge, size the box to the error you would accept on the ground, and use a map the class has met, can open, and that you may use. Finger sizes, and the pupils a click leaves out, are in the hotspot guide; these steps are the geography.

  1. Ask for something with an edge. A city, a confluence, a lake or a country can be boxed. The Sahel and a river along its length cannot: two teachers would draw two boxes. Ask for the river's mouth, or have the region named or sorted.
  2. Draw the box inside the feature. A click anywhere in the rectangle is right, so a box round a whole country takes in its neighbours, and one round a port takes in the sea.
  3. Size it to what was taught. On a map showing 2,000 km from top to bottom, a box a tenth of the picture's height is 200 km tall: fair if the lesson put the city "on the south coast", generous if the class used an atlas.
  4. Use the map the class learned on: the same outline and projection, with every name, legend and caption taken off.
  5. Make sure every pupil can open it. In EdProcto's Find it on the map the picture is given by its address and the pupil's device loads it from there, so try it on a phone not signed in to the school. The address travels with the question: call the file map-3, not nile-delta.
  6. Sit the question on a phone before the class does.

Whose map is it?

Use a map you drew, or one whose licence lets you put it online. An atlas page, an examination paper's map extract and a screenshot of a web map are someone else's work: read the terms first. We read one set for this guide: Natural Earth (n.d.) places its map data in the public domain and asks for no permission, so an outline drawn from it is yours to use. We read no other source's licence and name none.

How do you write questions on a graph, a chart or a contour map?

Draw the figure yourself, from your own figures or the class's fieldwork, and ask in rising order for a value, a pattern and a reason.

  • A value. A click ("Click the wettest month") or a number. A number read off a picture needs a margin. EdProcto's margins are percentages of your number, and its editor prints what they let through: for 6, with "Full credit within %" at 0 and "Half credit within %" at 20, "Full credit for 6 exactly; half credit from 4.8 to 7.2."
  • A pattern. Novices in Atkins and McNeal (2018) spoke of general trends, so ask for the particular: between which two months does rainfall drop most? Show one figure with options in words, or two figures (see comparing two images).
  • A reason. One to three sentences, read by you.

On a contour map, ask for the two skills in Atit et al. (2016) apart: a height ("How high is point X?") and a shape ("Click the steepest slope"). A small table of figures needs no picture: typed into the prompt a row to a line, it keeps its line breaks.

Which mistakes spoil geography quizzes?

Most come from the picture, not the wording.

  • Every question a place name. Location was the strong suit in Ofsted (2023); skills were the weak one.
  • A name left on the picture, in a legend, a caption or the file's name.
  • A reading marked exact, or a percentage margin never turned into numbers.
  • A sort item that fits two groups. A meander is made by erosion and deposition: give it a group of its own, as AQA (2016) does.
  • One spelling of a place name. In the scoring code "Sao Paulo" is wrong against "São Paulo": list each spelling you accept.

A worked example: ten questions on rivers, with the key

For ages 14 to 16, on three pictures you draw: an unlabelled contour sketch of a river basin; a storm graph (ours: heaviest rain in hour 3, peak discharge in hour 9); and two streamflow lines, K and M, for one storm.

  1. Find it on the map. Click the confluence. Key: a box round the meeting of tributary and main river, 12% by 12% of the picture. A click at the mouth takes the sea for a second river.
  2. Hotspot. Click the steepest valley side. Key: where the contours crowd, since closely spaced contours show a steep slope (Atit et al., 2016).
  3. Estimate, exact. On a 1:50 000 map two bridges are 4 cm apart. How far is that on the ground, in kilometres? 2. An answer of 20 or 0.2 has slipped a unit.
  4. Matching pairs. Match each scale to what 1 cm stands for: 1:25 000, 250 m; 1:50 000, 500 m; 1:250 000, 2.5 km; 1:1 000 000, 10 km. The first and third swapped: the bigger number taken for the bigger scale, close to the confusion in Kim (2014).
  5. Hotspot. On the storm graph, click the peak discharge. A click on the tallest rain bar reads the bars for the line.
  6. Estimate, with a margin. How many hours passed between the heaviest rain and the peak discharge? 6; with the margins above, 5 or 7 earns half.
  7. Compare two images. Which stream drains the town, K or M? K, which rises sooner and peaks higher, as an urban stream did beside a rural neighbour in Konrad (2003), who warns that land use may not be the only cause.
  8. Sequence the process. A wooded slope is built over. Order what follows: trees and soil are cleared; roads and roofs cover the ground; less rain soaks in; more water runs through ditches and drains; the stream rises sooner and higher (Konrad, 2003).
  9. Sort into groups. Erosion: interlocking spurs, waterfall, gorge. Erosion and deposition: meander, ox-bow lake. Deposition: levee, flood plain, estuary (AQA, 2016).
  10. Short answer. From the flood you studied, give one cause and one effect, each with a place name or a figure. "Heavy rain caused damage" fits every flood and earns nothing.

How does EdProcto run and mark each shape?

EdProcto is the best tool for a geography quiz built round a map, because the box you draw never reaches the pupil's device, the click is marked on the server, and the same quiz carries the number, the order, the sort and the written answer: nine of the ten questions above are marked before the lesson ends.

The box. Paste the picture's address into "Image address", and the editor asks for "The region the click must land in: drag a box on the image". The box is kept as fractions of the picture's width and height, so it holds at any screen size, and its size is printed beneath: "Region: 12% by 12% of the image." Multiply the two for the chance of a blind hit, 1.44% here.

A click. The pupil's device is sent the picture's address and the prompt, never the region. A click inside the box or on its edge earns the points; any other earns none, with "Partial credit" on or off. A click has no answer in words to show afterwards, so say where the place is in "Explanation shown to the student afterwards".

A number earns every point inside "Full credit within %", half inside "Half credit within %" and none beyond. Both at 0 means exact.

An order, a match, a sort are all or nothing until you switch "Partial credit" on. An order is then credited by its pairs of steps the right way round, less the pairs reversed: at 5 points, question 8 with two neighbours swapped scored 4, and with the last step first, 1. A match and a sort earn the share of items placed right: the swap in question 4 scored 2 of 4, and every landform dropped under Deposition 1.5 of 4. Leave the switch off where a blanket answer should earn nothing.

A written answer waits until you mark it or press "Ask Procto AI" on it and keep or change its mark. You release every score, and a score records one day's answers, not a grade.

Geography kits and plans

Among the kits, "World capitals" ("Sixty countries and their capitals, asked both ways, four options each.") and "Countries and continents" ("Fifty-six countries and their continents, both ways.") are drills made by rule, free without limit on every plan. "Geography (secondary)" ("Processes, places, cases, data.") is written by Procto AI from your own chapter, with any map or graph described in words: read each draft against the chapter and add the clicks with your own pictures.

Free takes thirty students a quiz, with the core templates and marking by rule. Tutor takes 100, with all 111 templates and "Ask Procto AI". Educator takes 500 and adds the full analysis, with the score by topic. See pricing.

Quick questions

What is a hotspot question in geography?

A picture, usually a map or a graph, and one place on it to click. EdProcto's Find it on the map marks the click against a box you draw and the pupil never sees.

How big should the box be on a map question?

As big as the error you would accept on the ground: turn the box into kilometres with the map's scale.

Should a geography quiz still ask where places are?

Yes, in a few of its slots: tested maps were better learned in Carpenter and Pashler (2007). Give the rest to scale, contours, graphs and processes.

Can I use a map from an atlas or a website in a quiz?

Only where its licence lets you put it online. Draw your own, or use data whose terms you have read.

References

Hotspot

Click the right part of an image.

In the builder now

See Hotspot

Read next