Maps From Here to There

Challenge your mapping skills! Interpret a map by plotting a trip. Have a classmate try to figure out your destination!

• 1.

  Divide into small groups. Each group needs a map of your community or even another part of the world that you have studied. Decide where you will travel from and to.

• 2.

  On an individual dry-erase board, draw the major routes needed to take you there with Crayola Dry-Erase Markers. Pay particular attention to turns.

• 3.

  Think about landmarks you pass on the way. Draw them (or symbols of them) on your map. These are clues for your classmates.

• 4.

  Take turns figuring out the beginning and ending destinations for each other’s directions.

Benefits

• Students demonstrate their understanding of maps by interpreting one and creating their own simplified version.
• Students recall and reproduce major landmarks on an imaginary journey as depicted on their dry-erase boards.
• Students analyze information drawn by their peers to solve the mystery of their mapped locations.

Adaptations

• Draw only landmarks. This strategy will be especially helpful when your destination is in another country.
• Play a game with the basic roads. Each map begins with a point value. If someone can identify locations without any other clues, they get that point value. If no one can figure it out, one clue (landmark) is drawn and the point value goes down by one. Con
• Draw several small trips from maps of different cities. Match the dry-erase map with the city map.
• Assessment: Students will be successful in creating a map if they have appropriately drawn directions from and to specified locations. Students will be successful in reading a map if they can determine the locations of their peer’s maps as well.