Using Different Kinds of Maps. By: Erin Moran

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Using Different Kinds of Maps. By: Erin Moran"

Sophie Nelson
7 years ago
Views:

1 Using Different Kinds of Maps By: Erin Moran Geographic Question: What is the connection between landforms and where people live in the United States? Overview: In third grade, it is important to expose children to the fact that there are different kinds of maps. Reading those maps and being able to use that information to draw conclusions are the skills that this lesson practices. This would be a culminating lesson of a unit on maps. Skills already discussed would be: What is a map? How is a globe different from a flat map? The meaning of geographic terms Practice with reading different kinds of maps Oregon Department of Education Standard for Geography: Grade 3 Benchmark- Identify physical characteristics of places and compare them. Grade 3 Benchmark- Describe how the physical environment affects people s lives. National Geographic Standards: #1. How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and techniques to acquire, process, and report information from spatial perspective. #3. How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth s surface. #4. The physical and human characteristics of places. #7. The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth s surface. Grade Level: Grade 3

2 Objectives: The students will be able to look at a landform, physical, population, and a political map of the United States to be able to read its information accurately. The students will be able to transfer the information from their atlas and other materials to their own maps. The students will be able to analyze their completed map to answer questions about the location of people, major urban areas, and land forms. Vocabulary: land form map, physical map, political map, population map, land form terms: plains, hills, plateaus, mountains, scattered mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Materials: Black line map of the USA States cut apart the size of the finished product to use as tracing patterns. Use tagboard. Manilla tag board cut to size of the largest state Paint- brown, blue, green Paintbrushes, newspaper, containers for paint Black felt pens 20 construction paper symbols to represent largest cities Class set of Atlases (I used Rand McNally) Land form map Political Map Population Map 50 black stars for capitals Stapler Data set AX: Populations of the Million Plus Urban Areas in 1990 from ARGUS Sentence Strips

3 Procedure: To have the children show they re understanding of reading different kinds of maps, follow the steps below: 1. Review how maps give different kinds of information. 2. Tell the students that they will be constructing a large U.S. map to compare landforms with population. 3. Find the pages in the atlas that are important for this project and discuss the keys. 4. Model, using the state of Oregon, what you want their finished product to look like. a. Trace the state on tag board. Don t cut! b. Look at the landform, and physical maps. Paint the landforms onto the state. c. Look at the political map. Find the capital of Oregon and use the star to show its placement on the map. d. Look at the population map in the atlas. e. Give the children a list of the top 20 most populated cities in the U.S. f. Explain the procedure of putting on the symbol for the city if they have one of the top 20 in their state. g. Label everything and put the name of the state on also. h. Cut out the map on its borders. 5. Have the students pick a state(s). Make sure that the remaining 49 states get done. 6. Put all the states up on the wall as they are done, like a large jigsaw puzzle. 7. Discuss as a class the generalizations they can make by looking at the completed map. Make sure they include ideas about how population is distributed according to landforms. One example of this could be: Where do you see more mountains? Where are most of the large cities? Why don t more people live in the mountains? 8. As these statements are made, write them on sentence strips and put them up around the map. Assessment: An assessment for this project would be simply looking at each state and scoring it on a ++ (excellent) +(good) +/- (some problems) -(not finished, too messy, or many missing parts) scale as to whether all information is there and complete.

4 Extensions: Another curriculum link would be writing an expository paragraph and giving an informative speaking task. Both of these could be scored with the state scoring guides for 3rd grade. To modify, you could draw the landforms on each state and they would just paint. To challenge, you could add more information like economies, climate or average temperatures for a certain season. You could also have the students write a persuasive paragraph about where the best place to live in the United States would be according to the information recorded on the map. To involve the whole school, invite other classes to add information that is important to their grade level on the map when you are done. An example would be the fourth graders putting up the Oregon Trail. Bibliography: Banks, James A. Communities: Adventures In Time And Place, Grade 3, McGraw Hill, 1999, pg. G Gersmehl, Philip J., Activities and Readings in the Geography of the United States (ARGUS), AAG, 1995, Map A3 and Data Set AX. Map Essentials Big Book, National Geographic, 1999, pg.8.

What I Learned. List the three most important things you learned in this theme. Tell why you listed each one. Name. 22 Geography Learning Masters

What I Learned. List the three most important things you learned in this theme. Tell why you listed each one. Name. 22 Geography Learning Masters What I Learned List the three most important things you learned in this theme. Tell why you listed each one. 1. 2. 3. 22 Geography Learning Masters How I Learned Think about reading the books in this theme.