Orienteering: Map Skills

Students use a map to locate six specific landmarks on a course using a map. They identify how maps can help us and write a paragraph describing how to get from one landmark to another on the map.

Second and third graders practice with basic map skills. They create their own map including a legend and a compass rose. This fabulous plan has many excellent websites linked which allow learners to explore maps of all kinds; including...

Young cartographers design maps of their school gardens, including a key, compass indicating correct orientation, and colors to enhance their map details.

Young geographers travel back through time with primary source and map analysis and envision Captain John Smith's arrival at the Chesapeake Bay. 

Students discover orienteering. In this orienteering lesson, students search for six specific landmarks. Students brainstorm how maps and landmarks are helpful.

Students create and read maps. In this map skills lesson, students draw a map of their neighborhood, then use skills acquired during map-making to interpret a classmates map and a map of the Ming Dynasty.

Fourth graders become familiar with and able to read city and state maps, plot a route on a state map, and use scale to determine locations one-half and one mile away from the school. They construct a map of their own.

Students are introduced to the key concepts of maps; direction, pathway/line, shape and symbol. They create the pathways and shapes they have "mapped" out on paper on the floor. They dance along the paths.

First graders use maps to identify five specific landmarks in a local area. In groups, they create a list of how maps and landmarks can help them find their way to a place. They complete an exercise in which they use symbols found on...

Maps can be so much fun, they help you understand spatial relationships, distance between objects, and can foster direction skills. Budding cartographers with visual impairments use the Wheatley Tactile Diagramming Kit to create their...