Rachel Pankowski and Dusti Eide

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Title: Maps

Grade Level: 4-5

Content Areas: Critical thinking, maps

Learning Target/Goals: Be able to think about maps in a critical way in order to understand that maps can be culturally biased

EALR’s/GLE: Social Studies – geography 1.1 use and construct maps, charts, and other resources

Assumptions: Students know how to work in groups, brainstorm, one person in each group has the ability to write/draw, have had some exposure to maps.

Pre-assessment: Show them the day before the classroom map and ask them if they believe if it accurately portrays our world. Why do you think so? (Have them write a brief answer to these questions)

Lesson:

Day: One

Key Concepts: Maps, keys and legends, perspective

Objectives: After making a map of the classroom with a small group, students will display their maps and compare the differences between them. Students will then discuss what this means for maps in general and how and why maps differ from each other. Students will then be able to demonstrate understanding by writing a journal entry on “why do you think maps of the world can be so different from each other?”

Rationale: It is important to understand that some information is not as scientific as society would have you believe.

EALR’s: Social Studies – geography 1.1 use and construct maps, charts, and other resources

Materials Needed: Paper, markers, rulers, crayons, many different world maps that represent the world in very different ways.

Procedures:

Discrepant Event: Show the upside down map. This map is commonly used in Australia.

Introduction: Today we are going to look at why maps of the same things can look so different.

Activating Prior Knowledge: Does this map (the ‘upside down’ one) look like a map you have seen before? (knowledge) How is it different than what you are used to? (knowledge)

Learning Target: Reasoning

Learning Activity:

Procedures:

1. Today we are going to make maps of our classroom. Let’s brainstorm what kinds of things would be helpful to put on your map. (Allow 5 minutes for students to list things and display this list where students can see it for the remainder of the activity) Make sure a bulleted list of things to do is also visible – with time limits.

2. I will divide you into groups of 4-5. Each group will designate a materials person to come up and get a large sheet of paper, some markers and a ruler. (1 min)

3. When I call your name, pay attention to who your group members are. When I say go, find a place in the room and designate a materials person. You will then begin making a map of the classroom. In your groups you will have 20 minutes to work to complete your maps. Group students heterogeneously. (1 min)

4. Go! Walk around the room, assisting groups. (20 min)

5. After 20 minutes- get class’ attention and have one group at a time, come up and hang their map where it can be seen. (3 min)

6. Now you will have 5 minutes to walk around the room and see what other maps look like. Pay attention to what is the same as your groups’ map and what is different. After five minutes I will call you back to your seats to share what you have seen. Raise your hand if you know what we are going to do. Call on someone to repeat the directions. Ask if there are any questions; go!

7. Discussion: List on board similarities and differences found in different colored chalk. Why did your group decide to put ___ in and leave ___ out? Ask 3-4 students from different groups. Map makers have to make decisions, just like you did. What does that tell us about maps? (comprehension) (10 min)

8. Show the ‘upside down’ map again and ask them how it could have been drawn differently, and who they think made this map and why did they make it like this? Compare to ‘normal’ world map and ask students if they think they know who made this map and why? (4 min)

9. Validity: is either map less valid than the other? Why or why not? (4 min)

10. Mini lecture on keys and legends and the connotations of what it means to be called a legend (that maps are narratives, tales and stories that can be interpreted different ways). By calling it a key the map seems more scientific than by calling it a legend. (4 min)

Closure: “What did we do today?” “What did you think about today that you hadn’t thought about before?” “How will this affect your view of maps in the future?” (2 min)

Post Assessment: Students will write a journal entry answering “Why do you think maps of the world can be so different from each other?” “How are people’s personal perspectives used when making maps?” If students are unable to write consider some of the following options: Have an oral interview with the student, let the student use a computer for their journal entry or a tape recorder, or have the student draw a picture representing their ideas.

Crystallization: Following days activities:

Day 2: What constitutes a map? (Students look at many cultural, historical and contemporary maps and analyze their own definition of a good map.

Day 3: Projecting a curved surface onto a flat plain. (Distortions of earth, problems of distortion, etc.)

Day 4: The power of up and center (What does it mean to have America and Europe front and center? Whose viewpoint made this map?)

Day 5: Conceptions of the world (historical and contemporary maps presented and discuss how maps and map making have changed over time and place –rank maps from oldest to newest).