[disneynut]

Does anyone have any ideas that would "spice up" a lesson on map scales? I did latitude/longitude yesterday and even I was bored with it!

I googled map scale lessons and came up with very little.

TIA

[kmob]

When I taught map scale we did a basic worksheet to introduce, and then we drew a scale map of the classroom. Everyone measured with meter sticks...length and width of room, size of desks, computer table, etc... then we put all the measurements on the board. We figured out what scale would make everything fit on a standard sheet of paper (1 M= 1cm). We drew the scale map on graph paper (this did take more than a day). They had a blast and when I gave a quiz wksht the next day they all did decently on it. I know another teacher who gives a few nights to create a scale map of one room (besides the bathroom) in their houses.

For latitude and longitude we do the lesson and then I give out maps and we "race" to find certain coordinates and or name the cities at certain cooridinates.

Hope that helps

Hi, I am having my students take trips across the United States. For example we are learning the Northeast region and they will soon pick a beginning state and an ending state from another region. They are then going to map how they will get their, what directions they need to follow, what states they will go through, and finally how many miles it will take. Using different maps found on the Internet will help so they will learn that scale can be different on every map, but the amount of miles should be relatively the same.

This also reinforces the 5 regions of the US, geography of the US