Educators Can Access Online Lesson Plans Using Maps from the GRMC

Just in Time for Back to School: Teachers Can Access Online Lesson Plans Using Maps from the GRMC

Elementary through high school teachers planning lessons can find creative ways to use maps when teaching history, geography, economics, sociology, science, and even English/literature. The Geospatial Resources & Map Collection in Bracken Library has created an online guide for using maps in the K-12 classroom available on the GRMC Web page under Online GRMC Map Tutorials. The guide, Teaching with Maps, can also be found directly at http://www.bsu.edu/library/article/0,,54747--,00.html

This online guide provides ideas for using maps and atlases from the GRMC for young children through high school students. Teachers can learn how to teach their students how to create their own custom maps of their rooms at home or of a treasure island. High school students create maps of famous people and inventions from Canada. Ideas are given for using topographic and insurance maps to study how large cities have grown over time. Middle school students use a map of South America to create a picture book about the Amazon rain forest. Students can even learn world geography and sociology studying soccer, surfing, and the Olympics. And teachers can even assign seats for their seating charts using latitude and longitude coordinates.

One unique feature of this online guide is that individual lesson plans are available as PDF files that may be printed off for the classroom. The lesson plans are saved as World Shared files accessible to teachers anywhere.

Maps from the GRMC can be borrowed by teachers or classes can visit the GRMC to use the maps and atlases. For more information about using maps in the classroom, please contact Melissa Gentry in the GRMC at 765/285-1097 or at mgentry@bsu.edu