National Geographic
Mapping the Shape of Everest
With Mount Everest as the motivator, your earth science class learns about topographic maps. Begin by showing a film clip from The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest, featuring fearsome virtual imagery of a path up world's tallest peak....
American Museum of Natural History
Map Your Own World
Young archaeologists practice their mapping skills by creating a detailed site map of their room or another room in their home. After indicating walls, windows, doors, and closets, they add furniture and objects, labeling each item.
Curated OER
"How To Build A Snowman" Expository Writing
Fourth graders write a "how to..." or an expository essay on building a snowman. They practice giving directions by explaining how to draw a person using shapes without mentioning that it's a person being drawn. They revise through the...
Museum of Disability
Taking Visual Impairment to School
What is the world like when you can't see, or when your vision is impaired? Learn about how Lisa communicates with the world around her with Taking Visual Impairment to School by Rita Whitman Steingold. Learners answer discussion...
Scholastic
Tell Us a Tale: Teaching Students to Be Storytellers
Encourage scholars to retell their favorite short story or folktale, adding personal details to make it their own. After reading their book of choice several times, story tellers retell a tale verbally to their classmates.
Mathematics Assessment Project
Sports Bag
Why not give surface area of cylinders a sporting chance in your classroom? A strategic problem-solving task requires pupils to consider the net of a cylinder. Individuals must determine the sizes of the pieces needed to make a sports...
Mary Pope Osborne, Classroom Adventures Program
The Backpack Travel Journals
Strap on those backpacks, it's time to travel through history with this literature unit based on the first four books of The Magic Tree House series. While reading through these fun stories, children create story maps, record interesting...
Orange County Water Atlas
Location, Location, Location…
Young geographers discover not only how to read and recognize coordinates on a map, but also gain a deeper understanding of latitude and longitude and how climate changes can vary significantly across latitudes.
Curated OER
From Sheep to Rug
Ever wonder where wool comes from? How it is used to make a woven rug? Introduce the Native American craft of rug making to your preschool or kindergarten class with a discussion. Learners examine and discuss images of a Native American...
Curated OER
Orienteering: Map Skills
Students use a map to locate six specific landmarks on a course using a map. They identify how maps can help us and write a paragraph describing how to get from one landmark to another on the map.
Curated OER
Magical Maps
Second graders discuss the importance of using maps and how they are used. After they listen to a folktale, they develop their own story line maps and write their own folktale to accompany a map. They also identify and locate the seven...
Curated OER
Pirate Map
Students write directions explaining how to get from one location to another by using a map of their town and use simple maps to identify and locate places.
Random House
Mapping Skills
Spark interest and enhance your pupils' map skills using Matteo Pericoli's book, See the City: the Journey of Manhattan Unfurled. Through Pericoli's illustrations and text, learners explore the East and West side of Manhattan. Then,...
abcteach
Street Mapping
What's around the block? Or down the street? Ask your pupils to tap into their map skills by drafting the area around their home and school.
Curated OER
Exploring Arizona's Biotic Communities Lesson 1: Mapping Biotic Communities
As part of a unit on Arizona's biotic communities, young ecology learners create a map. They describe how humans and animals adapt in their habitat. They take notes and create graphic organizers from articles they read. Beautiful maps,...
Curated OER
Unit II: Worksheet 5 - Velocity and Motion Maps
A chart with eight rows makes up this handout. The columns are labeled with two graphs ("x vs. t" and "v vs. t"), a written description, and a motion map. One cell in each row is filled in, leaving the rest for your class to complete....
Social Media Toolbox
Ethical Decision Making
When faced with a dilemma, how do journalists decide how much news to use? Social media scholars explore the philosophies of ethical resolution in the first of a 16-part Social Media Toolbox series. Partnered pupils use a Potter Box to...
Space Awareness
How Light Pollution Affects the Stars: Magnitude Readers
Did you know light can decrease visibility? Light pollution absolutely makes it more difficult to see stars. Scholars build a simple magnitude reader to determine the magnitude of stars. They use these data to estimate the impact of...
Reed Novel Studies
Underground To Canada: Novel Study
Julilly dreams of freedom after being taken from her mother by a slave trader. Will she ever be free again? A resource focuses on the first chapter of Barbara Smucker's book Underground to Canada, and includes 10 vocabulary words,...
Curated OER
Making A Story Map
Sixth graders learn to plan a story by using a story map. They analyze a detailed sample story map and answer 5 questions about it. Then, plan their own story using a story map template.
Curated OER
Mapping a Garden
Students study the components of a map, particularly the legend, the key, the symbols and the area. They develop their own map of a garden that they can plant in a future science lesson.
Curated OER
Map Coordinates: Monkey Map
Here's an engaging, meaningful, and clever lesson on map skills for elementary schoolers. Pupils combine story writing with mapping skills to create an original piece of work. They utilize a worksheet embedded in the plan to guide them...
Curated OER
Introducing Maps Through Dance
Students are introduced to the key concepts of maps; direction, pathway/line, shape and symbol. They create the pathways and shapes they have "mapped" out on paper on the floor. They dance along the paths.
PHET
Mapping the Field of a Dipole Magnet
High school scientists build their own magnetometer and use it to map the field surrounding a bar magnet. Excellent background resources is included, as well as a diagram of how to build the magnetometer.