Mapping with the Year 1s

After discovering that the City of Belmont had a new yourmove map, with St Augustine's students as models for the photography I asked Crawford from the City of Belmont if I could have 30 copies to take for an activity. I knew that the year 1 class had been learning how to read maps in their maths class and I thought using these maps to map their way to school would be a great activity to run with them during their maths rotations.

I asked Mrs Debuf, the Yr 1 teacher if she would allow me to guest parent help in the class to do this activity. Mrs Debuf was more than happy to accomodate my request. We organised a time in the last week of school, so that the children could have their maps ready to use to explore their neighbourhood with their families during the school holidays.

Mrs Debuf started the lesson with a revision video of maps and directions the video explained how to use a legend and a compass rose.

After the revision lesson, we broke the children into 3 groups. Each group had 15 minutes with me to look at the maps, while Mrs Debuf had other mapping activities set up for the other groups. We started by looking at the two sides to the map - the public transport side and the walk/cycle side. Most of the students chose to use the walk/cycle side of the map. From there we used the key to find the symbol for school and looked at all of the different schools in Belmont until we located our school. The children were surprised to find so many other schools!

Once we had all located our school, we looked at the surrounding streets and located some of the local landmarks that the students are all familiar with, such as Jack Ring Park, the footbridge over the Freeway and the Surrey Rd underpass. After getting familiar with the area using the landmarks, most children were able to find their houses and we drew the path to school on the map. Luckily the Yr 6 your move team also came to help with the lesson and they were able to assist to locate some of the trickier areas. Some of the children were able to locate landmarks that are further away such as Belmont Hub and Belmont Oasis, and they had fun pointing out all of the areas that they know.

When it was time to pack up, the children has lots of fun helping each other learn to fold the maps back into their original positions.

The students were chuffed to be allowed to keep their own maps and I heard one student tell her Dad at pick up time that she wanted to use her map to show him the way to walk home! Another family told me their map has pride of place on their kitchen fridge. Before this lesson, it hadn't occurred to me that paper maps are a rare thing for children who have probably never seen a UBD before. I will be asking Crawford for more as it was a great hit!