Hi everyone!
This week’s class session on the importance of geography was truly enlightening for me. Prior to last night, when I thought of the term “geography”, the environment and land structures was all that came to mind. However, now I know that geography encompasses much more than that. It allows for us to study the connections between people, places, and their surroundings.
We also had the privilege of taking an in-depth look at John Smith’s Map and having the opportunity to create our own. Our introduction world map activity was significantly eye-opening for me. It brought to my attention the glaring fact that I have lost a majority of geographical knowledge over the years. Did you have a similar experience?
Personally, I recall using selective maps throughout my elementary instruction, but I struggle to remember what specific lessons they were utilized for. Therefore, my questions for you are: were maps included in your K-12 experience? Did your thoughts on the importance of maps evolve throughout our class session? Lastly, what do you think are the most engaging ways to include maps in lessons across all subjects?
I also attached a link that provides some great resources discussing activities that involve maps: https://serc.carleton.edu/k12/maps.html
I am looking forward to hearing your responses!
-Mimi Bainbridge
Hi Mimi,
Thank you so much for your post and these enlightening questions.
This week’s class opened my eyes to how significant teaching geography to students is. It also opened my eyes to how much more I have to learn about our nation’s history and geography. As I mentioned in class, Dr. Stohr’s words ” Teachers must be committed to lifelong learning,” will stick with me. I’m determined to continue to learn and expand my knowledge as much as possible in order to be fully prepared to educate students about our nation’s history.
To be honest, I was never the biggest fan of maps during my K-12 education, I always thought of them as very boring. I think this is because of how maps were incorporated into lessons, though. Normally, my social studies teachers would instruct us to observe a map and answer questions based on the map. I do believe maps are very informative and a great resource for students to learn, if the maps are presented to students in an engaging way. For example, even asking students to discuss with their classmates what they noticed and wondered about the map is more engaging and interesting than instructing students to answer a set of questions based on the map. Having students create a list of questions they have about the meaning and details of the map is effective as if forces students to question and wonder. It’s important for teachers to effectively encourage students to think about the map’s connections to communities, people, and places.
Hello Mimi!
Thanks for your response. I had the exact same experience. Looking at a lot of the geographical material we were shown, it was apparent that I lost the little knowledge I had learned in my years of schooling. The world map in my head was obviously lacking in a lot of areas! Looking at the John Smith map, I was very intrigued by the differences and similarities that a current map of the same area would have. How John Smith viewed that area in his travels reveals a lot about his expeditions and the colonization of the Americas.
When I was younger, we used maps, but we never had lessons dedicated to them. They were usually current maps that we would take a glance at every once in a while. I hope that in my classroom I’m able to use maps more often than that. I want to integrate maps into every topic of instruction, and be able to have students analyze and read maps several times a quarter. I believe that allowing students to explore these maps will promote engagement in Social Studies.
Thanks again for sharing!
Ashley
Hi Mimi,
Thank you for your post!
Unfortunately like many of our classmates, I had a similar experience. I have been very self-aware of the fact that geography did not come easily to me, and was confident in where the continents were, but when they were asking for such specific information like mountain ranges and rivers, I was lost! It makes me wonder where my knowledge of geography went, and when I learned about it! I did not take any geography courses in middle or high school that I remember. The geography course that I took here at UR that’s required by the state of VA did not go over where specific places are on the map of. the world, I think it was assumed that we knew it! I definitely need to work on my world map in my mind before teaching.
I really enjoyed looking at John Smith’s map. Personally, I find maps very intriguing. I love learning about the past, and seeing things from it. So, seeing Smith’s map and comparing it to the map of Virginia that we know and have seen many times was awesome. It is crazy how the orientation of the state has changed. It was also great to learn more about how the people living in John Smith’s lifetime had lived in Virginia, such as where their homes were in proximity to the water and one another.
I honestly can’t remember if a ton of maps were in my K-12 experience, but I would like to believe that there were some throughout my years. I would love to use maps in my own classroom, as I believe they are extremely valuable. Students can work on their comprehension skills in a different way, such as looking to see where houses were built and if they were near a water source understanding why that probably is depending on the time period. I believe that maps, especially of the past, can tell us a million stories if you take the time to look hard enough.
I think providing a map to students with questions about it is engaging, or giving students two different maps to compare and contrast. It is also very important to differentiate the types of maps you are showing your students! You should not just be showing them one kind at all times. Switch up the views, the orientations, the focus, etc.
Thank you!
Halle
Greetings, Mimi! Thanks for raising these questions and posting this link.
I do not recall being shown or instructed in the use of maps by any of my elementary school teachers, though probably some or all of them did so, and I just don’t remember because I generally remember little about my early life. The first time I clearly recall a map playing a central role in my K-12 education was in my 6th grade Gifted Enrichment class, when the teacher (Mrs. Fox-Valdez, a boisterous nerdy woman whom I adored as an apprentice wizard adores his master) got out a giant posterboard featuring a map of Mesopotamia and the Levant and assigned each table of students an Ancient Near Eastern civilization to roleplay as. For the following couple of weeks, we sought to conquer the Cradle of Civilization with armies in the form of differently colored pushpins at the beginning of each class, while researching and making projects based on our assigned cultures (incidentally, my friends and I were the Phoenicians—praise be to Ba’al and Astarte!). I don’t recall many more details, but obviously we would have learned through experience where the different cultures were located and what land and sea routes they had access to for trade and warfare, and I do remember that spaces with water sources were the most coveted spots on the gameboard because they made it possible to feed more troops, so we got a sense of the importance of bodies of water in the political geography of an arid region. Kids love games and competing with each other, so I think this would be an excellent way to involve maps in the classroom, and it could be reused for many different periods in history and regions of the world, though one would have to be careful not to let the game overtake the lesson. Any aspect of gameplay must be clearly relevant to and shaped around the learning objectives, and students must be directed in making connections between their experiences in the game and the experiences of people in history. Otherwise the game or activity just becomes a break/recess that is thematically tied to the topic of instruction but does not aid instruction.
In my eighth grade World History class and my high school History and Latin classes, we regularly were given maps to study at the beginning of units and then had to fill out “map quizzes” to test our memory of these locations and geographical features. A few of my college Anthropology classes also included map quizzes. I vaguely recall being very bad at map quizzes when my teachers first began to assign them, but I believe I improved over time and did well on them later on. However, in most courses there was little direct connection made between the maps and the instruction that followed them, I think.
I’ve been looking at and drawing a lot of maps for my Multi-Genre Research Project and Digital Toolbox, for both of which I have chosen VS.2 which includes the geographic regions, waterways, and Indian language-group regions of Virginia. It has pleased me greatly to notice the connections between different maps and what they tell you about what happened in history; for instance, the Algonquian-speaking Powhatans’ territory overlapped pretty much exactly with the Coastal Plain region, while the Siouan-speaking Monacans inhabited the lands west of the Fall Line, which tells you that the Powhatans, like the English who later conquered them, traveled mainly by boat and had great difficulty navigating the rapids of the Fall Line. And indeed this is exactly the case. If students are guided to compare maps divided into linguistic or cultural regions with maps divided into ecological regions, they will get an excellent sense of how the development and movement of human cultures is dependent on the natural environment and the resources and obstacles it provides, which is one of the most important principles for children to learn in Social Studies class. This is especially valuable when studying heavily colonized regions in the New World and Africa, where modern national and provincial borders typically have almost nothing to do with either natural or human/tribal geography, but rather were arbitrarily set in recent times according to the political and economic ambitions of distant European overlords.
Hey Mimi!
Thank you for your post and your questions.
I relate a lot to your experiences from last class. I found that most of what I had learned about geography in the past I had forgotten about. I believe that I can chalk this up to rarely reviewing geography in my K-12 experiences. By the time that I was in upper middle and high school history, I don’t recall learning/reviewing geography at all. If we had, it certainly was not in depth or frequent enough for me to recall. We spent most of our time learning facts and writing rather than looking at maps. The only time I can remember using maps was in 5th grade when we had to learn the locations of every state. I am sure there were more instances in which I utilized maps, but they were likely very superficial.
Following the lessons from our last class, I can confidently say that maps are a lot more useful than I thought they were. I, like many of our peers, thought about geography and maps in a more regional sense. After we got the chance to look at the Atlas of Virginia, I realized that there are so many opportunities to use maps, and not just in history. Maps could be useful for teaching kids about science such as natural disasters or climate. They could also be used to teach students about the economy, since agriculture plays a major role in how various states make money, in both the past and present. I believe there could be ways to incorporate maps and/or geography in every subject if you really wanted to. There is enough variation in geography that it can be adaptable to benefit students in a multitude of ways, and I certainly won’t make the mistake of overlooking it again!
Hi Mimi!
Thank you so much for sharing some insight towards your own education concerning the use of maps!!
Im my own experience, I cannot remember using maps until grades 6-8. This may be because they were not used in lessons from kindergarten until 6th grade, or it shows that maps were not being used in an effective manner within lessons because I couldn’t remember them.
Before our class experience, I never really thought about all you can do with maps within the classroom! My thoughts absolutely changed throughout our class session because I started to see how the show more than just physical places. I love how maps are used to show history of people, important events, and how land/water has changed over time. I never thought of maps as more than showing physical features of the world, but I soon learned there is much more that is included in maps as the class time passed.
I believe that using a combination of maps and data that can be pulled from maps is a great way to cover all subject areas! I love the idea of doing a notice and wonder chart about a map first, and then further diving into the content and explanation of what is being depicted through the map. I plan on incorporating this into my classroom, and making this a common routine!
Thank you for your intriguing questions!!
-Alexa
Hi Mimi,
Thank you for your prompts and insights into the importance of geography in the classroom!
To my surprise, I very much enjoyed this week’s class about geography and maps. In elementary school (remember, pre-internet days here), I remember that in third or fourth grade, we had a map of the United States at the front of the classroom, kind of like a shade that could be pulled down in front of the chalkboard. We memorized the names of all of the states in order via song, and then we had to take turns going up to the front of the class and pointing at each state alphabetically as the rest of the class sang the song. Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. And that’s all I remember about using maps in school. If any other map-related learning experience was worse, I’m grateful that it didn’t cement itself into my long-term memory.
Last semester in science class, our Population Health lesson was one of the most eye-opening and memorable for me from all of our education classes up to this point. I loved how an integrative map could tell a story, with students being able to make predictions about things like “why do you think the population of xyz country would have decreased at this time period?” Ever since then I’ve started to think more critically and imaginatively about how we can use maps differently for the students that we’ll teach. I also feel like the Atlas Virginia project is an amazing resource that really helps students make connections more easily between subject matters, especially between social studies and science. I think there will also be many opportunities to have students reference information on maps to answer math questions, and we can provide students with prompts to get them to write about what they notice, integrating language arts concepts. The advent of Google Earth allows for students to engage with maps more interactively and is the one that stood out the most for me in the resource that you shared.
I’m really happy that we took the time in class to explicitly talk about the concept of distortion because we now have a memorable way to cover this as teachers. All hail the Halo! One of my takeaways is that perspective/map orientation and distortion are important elements of using maps that we need to ensure all students understand.
Thank you again Mimi for sharing your questions for our class this week!
Sue Anne
Hi Mimi,
I appreciate the linked information you provided which should be helpful with lesson planning. Our class this week was so informative and it showed how to engage students in geography using an atlas and maps. I think about how Dr. Stohr and Dr. Bland initially engaged us in drawing what we remember of how the world map looked from previous experience. Immediately, this brought us into our geography lesson and ready to explore the five themes of geography, which was very interesting. This type of scaffolding technique is what I would use when developing lesson planning. When I think back to K-12 instruction, I can’t recall any instruction in reading maps or reviewing an atlas like we did in class on Tuesday. Although I do remember instruction using a globe at some point because from that time on I wanted to buy to have at home. Of course, with the digital age, it is no longer really necessary but if I have a chance I think I would still get one. As far as maps, we took many car trips growing up and were taught by our family how to read and use a map for navigation when traveling. In regards to using maps across other subjects, I can see using the maps in math to compare population rates at different periods of time. Maybe you could use maps in science to follow the path of rivers or lakes in a particular area. These are just a couple of examples but I am sure there are many more. Thanks again Mimi for providing this great information.
Thanks, Tera
Hello Mimi,
Thank you for your post for class.
This class was very interesting, giving us the chance to view different maps and fill in locations. The class did a great job with the drawings, I believe everyone was on the same page because our maps look very similar to one another. It has been a while since I have had an opportunity to view maps and label locations as we had to do.
Geography does encompass an enormous amount of information. Viewing the map Of John Smith from the Library of Congress is always amazing, to see firsthand history and see what people had to work with many years ago. I agree that studying people, places, and their surroundings permits the text books to come to life, and it’s important to witness works of history and not just read about it.
It is easy to lose knowledge over the years if we do not keep that information fresh in our minds. Maps were included in my K-12 experience, but most of that information is a fading memory. I do know that maps and other information learned during this journey at UoR will be helpful once we are in our careers.
Milton
Hello Mimi!
Thank you for your contribution and reflection!
I did use maps in school, but I do not remember using them in any sort of explicit instruction. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I was required to learn where different countries were on the map, and even then, the assignments I did for that lesson were optional. It’s safe to say that I feel very lost when asked to point out or even name certain countries on a map. Unfortunately, I am not even all that comfortable naming all of our 50 states. I feel like this was definitely an important part of the curriculum that was overlooked in my educational experience, and I wish I was more aware of geography as a whole.
I think an engaging way to introduce maps in classrooms would just be to point out where each subject/book/time period/art was from. For example, if you read a Maya Angelou poem, you can point out where she was born (Missouri) and then where she died (North Carolina). You can also talk about the places she wrote about, the historical context of her poems, and the significance of her appearance in certain states. I think just pointing out where the certain states are located on the map while you are referencing the states will help the students gain more geographical understanding.
Carstyn K
Hi Mimi!
Thanks for your questions, I also had similar thoughts and questions at the end of last weeks lesson.
I honestly don’t remember a lot from my schooling at all (which is terrible because it really wasn’t that long ago), but I do remember vividly my 3rd grade social studies, and more specifically ancient Mali. Part of the Virginia SOL’s in 3rd grade require you to learn about the ancient civilizations of China, Egypt, Mali, Greece and Rome, and for some reason the Mali section stands out the most. I do remember maps for my lessons, but they were mostly just pictures of the borders of modern Africa (modern maps for an ancient civilization…) and just coloring in the country of Mali so that we would be able to identify them on a map. While fun to color, there was really no additional effort put on our maps to get us to think more deeply about the ancient civilization and the imports and exports they needed to survive.
Since this class, I have thought deeply about how to incorporate maps and discuss them within my classroom. I am thinking (at the moment) that I would like to teach 1st grade, so I am thinking about Virginia SOLs and all that I am required to teach and how and where I can expand the SOL to incorporate maps. Jamestown is a large part of the 1st grade SOL, so there are opportunities for me to utilize maps and apply a deeper level of knowledge and thinking for my students, but I have a hard time thinking about how deep exactly I should help them to think – since I am not a 1st grader and haven’t been for a long time, it is hard for me to know exactly what the students would be able to think about for themselves and where I would need to begin to scaffold them. However, this class has shown us great resources to use and has given at least me the idea that I am not going to get everything perfect the first year I teach and that I can adapt lessons and take it further if needed.
Hi Mimi!
When I was in high school I took AP Human Geography for an additional credit my senior year. In this course, we learned more about the human interaction and cultural side of geography. This really helped me bring more insight into what geography really means. Most students in Virginia will take World Geography and in that course, they will learn about the physical locations of certain places but they don’t learn the huge human impact from these locations as in-depth as they could.
During my K-12 experience maps were used semi-often. I would say in elementary we would use the big map in the classroom to gain a wide variety of explanations as to what is where in the world. In 8th grade when I was taking Word Geography we would do map quizzes but the maps were always in the same direction. I was curious if like John Smiths’ map in which Virginia looked different if they quizzed us in different ways if we would have retained the knowledge better. Not too sure about that one but an interesting idea.
I believe that maps can be super beneficial for all age levels and disciplines and not just geography or science.