NASA
Nasa: Space Place: Make a Topographic Map
Find out what topographic maps are and how to make them. The instructions are complete with pictures to help you construct a mountain of clay and and a corresponding topographic map.
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: Jason: Make a Topographic Map
Rainforests at the Crossroads: Make a topographic map of a simulated terrain, which consists of your classroom floor and two boxes of different sizes.
Harvard University
Harvard University: Maps and Mapping
This site is provided for by Harvard University. Students follow a map on a scavenger hunt, create a map of their classroom and their town, learn how to read topographic maps, and discover latitude and longitude in these inquiry activities.
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Serc: Mapping Potato Island
In this hands-on activity, students make a topographic map to describe the shape of a potato. They will gain an understanding of how contour lines are used to describe the shape of the land surface.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Mn Step: Student Created Landform Maps With Glacial Emphasis
An activity where students work together to make topographic maps of a local park. The map must include a key and the grid locations of landforms in the park.
Curated OER
University of Texas: Afghanistan: Topography
A 1986 topographical map of Afghanistan from the Perry-Castaneda Collection. You can clearly see the mountain ranges, valleys, and passes that make up this mountainous country.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Topo Triangulation
In this activity, students will learn how to read a topographical map and how to triangulate with just a map. True triangulation requires both a map and compass, but to simplify the activity and make it possible indoors, the compass...
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Nagt: Urban Planning 101: Map Appreciation
In this lesson students will begin by looking at a series of maps and they will brainstorm ways the natural world may interact with humans and vice-versa. Students will then come up with a list of features of a city or town, make...
Curated OER
Educational Technology Clearinghouse: Maps Etc: South China, 1971
"South China comprises the drainage basins of the middle and lower Yangtze River, the basin of the His Chiang (West River) in Kwangtung and Kwangsi; and the mountainous coastal provinces of Fukien and Chekiang. The division between the...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Land Surveying Project
This project resulted from of the collaboration of a computer aided drafting teacher, Chris Bond, and a math teacher, Lee Cable, (Hewitt-Trussville High School) to provide higher math expectations in CT and real life application in...
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: A Data Rich Exercise for Discovering Plate Boundary Processes
This article in the Journal of Geoscience Education describes a classroom exercise based on four world maps containing earthquake, volcano, topographical and seafloor age data. Students participate in this exercise by using a "jigsaw"...