Title: The Relative Location of Relatives#123

National Standard: 2 How to use mental maps and their representations as a way of organizing information about people, places, and environments in a spatial context.
State Standard: 10

Teaching Level: E

Lesson Introduction: A mental map represents a mental image a person has of an area and its contents. The area might be a room or a nation. Sketch maps are one way of communicating to others a sense of a mental map.. .

Objectives/Purpose: Students will use personal knowledge or interviews with relatives in order to map the distribution of their family members within the town, state, country, or world.

Materials: drawing paper

Procedure:

1)Tell the students that they will be creating a sketch map showing relative locations that are important to family members.

2) Ask students to , in their mind,make a list of family members and then to place them in relative locations at work or at home.

3) Have them then draw a sketch map that represents this information.

4) When students have completed their sketch map ask them to bring it home and share it with their family. Invite the family members to add other relatives or friends to the map.

Evaluation/Assessment: student work and parent feedback

Extension/Enrichment: Have students compare their sketch maps to existing maps. Create a graph showing the distribution of student family members across the communities, state, nation and the world.This lesson may be used with a unit about family histories and autobiographies

Reflection: How successful was this lesson? Did all students benefit? Were there any surprises? What might you do differently another time? Please note any changes that will make this lesson more effective and useful in the future and pass them along to the NHGA. We appreciate your comments.
Thank you.
The authors

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Original file name: 123rtf - converted on Tuesday, 20 October 1998, 20:55