Context

Geography is a science that investigates geographic space, landscapes, and the interactions between humans and their environments. One of the most important tools that geographers have are maps. Maps are two-dimensional visual illustrations that simplify and symbolize reality, helping us to understand the organization of geographic space.

A map is a representation of the world around us. Understanding maps requires learning the language of map symbols, colors, scale, geographic coordinates, and legends. Once these are understood, we are able to interpret the world and make informed decisions in new ways, as well as to understand past decisions.

Maps are very effective for visualizing change over time, as well. Comparing maps of a given space through different periods of time can show how human and environmental forces can interact and shape the world in profound ways.

The skills of reading and interpreting maps continue to be foundational today, given the connectedness that characterizes our world, as maps can help us understand the news, plan travel, get around an unfamiliar city, and even monitor changing weather patterns, migration of people, and shifting boundaries.

In a professional world, being able to read and interpret maps is an indispensable skill for cartographers, city planners, architects, engineers, and military and emergency management professionals. While map reading may not be their primary responsibility, being able to read maps will make them better at their jobs.

Lesson Idea: "Time Travelers and Mapping**

Project Goals

Students will learn about the meaning, reading and interpretation of maps through the creative construction of a “time map” that demonstrates changes and continuities of geographic space over time.

Activity Description

In the Time Travelers and Mapping Lesson, students will explore place and time by working in groups of 3–5 to research, compare, and illustrate real changes to their local places (a city, neighborhood, park etc.) from historical to the present time, and then creatively construct a “time map” that shows their findings and ideas in creative and visual ways.

Materials

• Large paper or poster board
• Pencils, pens, map pencils
• Protractor and ruler
• Images, maps (gathered digitally or from a library or other source) that illustrate different points in time for a specific place and that students can analyze to make their own maps of change over time
• Online resources for investigating maps and other data (optional)
• Map interpretation guides (provided by instructor)

Detailed Instructions

1. Local Place Selection - Each team of students will select a specific geographic location that they will research and map over time. It may be a neighborhood or region of a town or city, the location of the school the students are currently attending, the town/city in which they live, or another place of personal interest and/or historical significance.

2. Student Research - Using both printed and online resources and map interpretation guides, students will conduct research in order to locate maps that will enable them to reconstruct their selected locations at several points in time, from past to present, if possible. They will use their maps to create a timeline, and then work collaboratively to analyze the information they have gathered about their place. This analysis should uncover important changes over time: additions, deletions, alterations to structures (houses, businesses etc.), and any additions, subtractions or substantial alterations to other physical features such as natural landscapes and bodies of water, roads/transportation routes or the overall shape of an area. Students will be looking to determine why changes took place as well as what the changes were. This can be achieved by researching local or regional history as well.

3. Construction of Time Map- On large paper or poster boards, teams of students will use pencils to lightly sketch in basic geographic features (coastlines, rivers, roads etc.) of their area of study to create a base map. Using different colored pencils or pens, teams will create maps of their area over the different time periods they researched. Team members will decide upon and employ symbols (a key or legend will be included in the final presentation) for representing buildings, natural features, streets, and any other pertinent landmarks that can serve to illustrate how the space has changed over the period of time studied.

4. Comparing and Analyzing Maps- Working collaboratively and using maps of the same area from different points in history, students will document the ways in which the geographic space they researched changed, remained stable, declined or expanded etc. Students may also investigate reasons and results of change in order to draw conclusions about what may occur there over time and in the future.

5. Time Map Presentations- In front of the class or small groups, student teams will give presentations about the maps that they produced. These presentations may be enhanced if students include photographs/drawings that further illustrate how the place studied has changed over the periods of history that the student teams examined.

6. Written Reports- Each student will complete a one-page, single-spaced report, that provides a summary of the team’s project as well as an analysis of what was learned through this process. Students will be required to identify, from the research, at least three major changes in the region they studied and provide reasons for the change. Students will turn in BOTH their reports, individually, along with a copy of the time map that the team produced as one collaborative group.

Product

Students must turn in their time map along with an approximately one-page, single-spaced, written report.

The written report should contain the following elements, in this format (note- this may also serve as your rubric to determine student grades for the project. It is suggested that these components of the final written report be checked off and turned in along with their maps.):

• Title of their work (e.g. “Time Travelers: Mapping Local Change over Time”)

• Team member (student) names

• Introduction- a paragraph that describes what they did in this project

• Body of Report -a description of what was learned in the process of completing the project (at least one full paragraph). In this section of the report students will identify 3-5 specific physical changes and/or alterations to human structures that took place within the study area over the period of history mapped and researched. Students may include information about why they think or have learned the changes took place within their selected location. They will include appropriate details about what changed or was added to the landscape or built environment and the dates or approximate dates in which these alterations occurred.

• Conclusion- Students summarize what has been covered in the body of the written report by restating the major points presented. Any thoughtful reflections, questions generated or predictions for future change that students make as the result of completing the project may also be mentioned here, in the conclusion Students should be encouraged to share what they think about the results of their research as well as what the think about doing a project of this nature as part of a social studies curriculum.

• Bibliography (in correct format)

Note - Time Map projects should be visually appealing, neat and clearly presented. The report may be typed or neatly hand written in pen.