Geography Lesson Plan: Map it out Posted on October 2nd, 2014 by

Wait! What does my room look like again???

Wait! What does my room look like again???

In our initial lesson plan, we were trying to cover too many topics and introduce too many vocabulary words. We believed that focusing on a few would allow for greater comprehension. After simplifying our lesson plan, we were able to engage in a few ideas and get a more rich learning experience out of the narrow topic. Our students would have greater success and greater understanding. We do believe that the vocabulary words we chose for the lesson tied in very nicely and were easy to implement. An exit card was also a great addition as it checked for knowledge learned, and comprehension of the vocabulary and concepts.

If we were to do this in an actual classroom we could have expanded the lesson by allotting for more work time on the bedroom. It seemed that we had not allotted enough time,as students wanted to add quite a bit of detail. Another idea is to have asked students to provide more detail as homework. It may have been interesting to have them create a map of their room at home in order to compare the maps to one another. This would be a type of assessment technique as well. A form would be sent home with them, asking loved ones to sign off saying that their student has worked on their map and talked it through with them. Finally, if we had more time, it would be fun to have them flip over their bedroom map and create their “dream room.”

The feedback we received was really helpful! Everyone wanted to do more with the maps, to draw the classroom and school, to talk more about absolute location, creative writing with the bedroom, easier definitions, introduce TODALS, incorporate writing somehow, a handout for first graders to fill in, etc. There was even a suggestion regarding how to do something like this with older students: to map out the whole school or town. These are all great suggestions for teachers to think about if they do something similar to this.

Happy Thursday!

Kendra, Beth, Leah, Steph

 


3 Comments

  1. Zachary Dilger says:

    This lesson was exciting. It allowed kids a chance to share something about their personal lives, this is what my room looks like, they can make connections with their peers. It also is a fun way to bring arts/crafts into a lesson. I also firmly believe that you could use this lesson up through the higher elementary grades, just adapt the lesson at each grade making it a bit harder. I also really enjoyed working with absolute and relative location.

  2. Hannah Heider says:

    I really enjoyed this lesson, because it allows for creativity with drawing our bedrooms. By bringing in an aspect of familiarity with drawing what they knew, it allowed for critical thinking when asked “Where would you go to take a nap?” or “Where would you find a book?” It would have been fun to expand on the lesson and maybe even try to draw a map of the neighborhood the students lived in, to see what they remembered.

  3. Stephanie Aho says:

    I loved the idea of having students draw their own maps of their rooms. If I were teaching this in a classroom, as we learned about TODALS, we could add information to our maps as we learned about the different parts. Students could figure out the cardinal directions at home and put those on the map. There are so many other ways to develop this lesson. I believe that it could be useful in a unit about maps.
    In a way, having students make a map of their room without being there allows for a streamlined depiction. This could introduce writing and illustrating, were things are in a piece but there are some things left out. There are intentional pieces to that. That may be a bit of a stretch, though.