Sixth Grade Project: Mapping Your Neighborhood
Amount of Time Needed
One fifty-minute class period.
Material Needed
A projector connected to a computer with internet access, a screen for the projector, and a large sheet of paper with markers for each group.
Objectives
- Interpret geographic information from a graph or chart and construct a graph or chart that conveys geographic information (e.g., about rainfall, temperature, or population size).
- Explain the difference between absolute and relative location and give examples of different ways to indicate relative location for countries or cities across the world.
Procedure
- The instructor should give a brief demonstration to the digital scrapbook, with a focus on how to flip through and search the scrapbook.
- The class should explore the Google map and answer the discussion questions below.
- The class should then divide into small groups.
- Each group should draw a map of the school's neighborhood, and place at least six locations on the map.
- The class should meet back together and compare their maps. Which locations appear on all of the maps? How are the maps different?
- Students should discuss if they were to travel back to when Bettie was a student in the 1930’s, which of the places would be there? What locations have changed the most in the past eighty years?
Discussion Questions
- What types of locations appear the most on the map?
- What locations would Bettie’s classmates have put on a map (e.g., a library, a museum)?
- What do the locations on the map (made using the scrapbook) tell us about Bettie’s life while at Simmons College?