Using engaging resources: maps

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Journey sticks – linking geography and art
Journey sticks can be used as a tool to give children an active role in developing locational knowledge. Journey sticks can also lead to longer-term memory about place, encourage creative ways of using and understanding maps and encourage children to use and remember vocabulary associated with mapping and places. There are health and safety and class-management issues that need to be considered with this activity.

The journey sticks are made in the following way (teachers could make one first and then use it as a model for the children).

In the chosen location, each child selects a stick to work with (teachers could gather sticks in advance or use other materials, for example metre sticks or lengths of plastic piping). Children walk along a route in the area, although not everyone has to walk the same route if there are safety concerns. In open but confined outdoor spaces, children should choose their own routes. As they wander around the area, children pick up anything that interests them for whatever reason, and attach it in some way to their stick (using wool, sticky tape, etc) in the order they see it. It might not be possible to pick up some things, so a rubbing, small sketch or digital photograph might do instead.

The ‘Mapsticks’ page of the Home Farm website www.globaleducation.f9.co.uk/activities/mapstick.htm provides an example of journey stick.

Back in the classroom, each child uses their journey stick to create a messy/affective map. The Geographical Association’s website (www.geography.org.uk) provides background information on messy/affective maps.
[Fran Martin, University College, Worcester]

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Earthwalks – linking geography and art
Like journey sticks, earthwalks enable children to respond to the environment at both a cognitive and an affective level. This is a technique often provided at environmental centres. The website of the Bishopswood Environmental Centre in Worcestershire (www.bishopswood.org.uk) and ‘The Centre of the Earth’ section in the Wildlife Trust’s website (www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/urbanwt) contain more information about this.

An earthwalk can be designed to reflect special themes, for example colour and pattern in nature, the seasons or a geographical theme. Earthwalks help children develop observational skills and communicate their observations through speaking and listening to each other. They are also an excellent stimulus for creative writing. Earthwalks are also easy to do in any locality as long as long as there is a natural space somewhere, such as a local park or green space in the school grounds.
[Fran Martin, University College, Worcester]

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Geogs
Every lesson begins with ‘Geogs’, a warm-up into the geography world. This is mainly content-based and involves throwing an inflatable globe around the class, encouraging child participation. The child with the globe asks a question of the child it is thrown to.

Geogs questions can include naming locations and features, calling out countries found in different continents or challenging questions for peers.

This activity allows children to engage in geography from the beginning of a lesson, and the element of holding the world captivates the child audience. It also focuses children for the lesson in the same way the mental oral starter in numeracy aims to.
[Fran Martin, University College, Worcester]

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Maps
For homework, pupils collect maps of any sort from newspapers, magazines and packaging. In class, explore the uses of the maps with the pupils. Try categorising them and discussing in pairs or groups why the maps and the ways of presenting them have been chosen. The results can make a good display.
[David Beresford, Coleridge Community College, Cambridgeshire]

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Internet maps
For homework or in class, find a variety of maps centred on the school or the pupil's own house. Which map would they use for showing a local visitor how to get there? What about a visitor from overseas? Which map would they use to show how the area has changed over time? Ask the pupils to consider a variety of different uses for maps. Which ones are most suitable and why?
[David Beresford, Coleridge Community College, Cambridgeshire]

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Line dancing compass points
As a starter or plenary activity try using line dancing as a method to help children understand compass directions. Firstly, get the children to stand in three lines of ten. Choose some music that has a four-beat rhythm and ask the children to click their fingers in time with the music. Standing at the front of the class, instruct them which direction they should go in for a beat of four. Try using the eight points of a compass first (this can always be adapted to suit the ability of the pupils). If a child hesitates or goes in the wrong direction they are out and have to sit down.

The game will come to a head-to-head of two people and the last person is the winner. Both girls and boys are likely to enjoy this activity, the girls for the dancing and boys for the competition!
[Dawn Price, Katherine Lady Berkeley's School, Gloucestershire]

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Bread and cross-sections
Explain the concept of a map cross-section using a loaf of bread. Carve it into the shape of a mountain, adding some undulations, then paint it green and add a blue river. Show it to the pupils and cut it in half.
[Charlie Fisher and Ben Cliff, Denefield School, Reading]

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Fun with map symbols
Pupils can design their own games of snap or bingo based on map symbols, or use symbols to make a drawing of a person.
[Jennifer Gibson]

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Talking about maps
To enhance communication skills and mapping skills, two pupils are given two different maps. Without showing the maps to one another, they need to find out the differences between the two maps.

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Matching maps and photographs
To help pupils interpret maps, take digital photos of the local area or different parts of the local town. Display photos on the school intranet and provide pupils with a map of the local area (on paper). Pupils have to work out where the photos were taken in relation to the map. To extend the activity, pupils could look at land-use changes from the different parts of the map and construct their own land use map.

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Mapping the news
Use a local map in conjunction with a local newspaper to locate and record events in the local area, such as crime hotspots.

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Holidays in the local area (year 7)
Using an OS map extract, ask pupils to describe what a family did on holiday in the area for a week, giving distances to places, names/types of places visited and so on.

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