One of my favorite things to teach is topographic maps. It's so gratifying when you watch students as they figure out what all of the symbols mean and begin to make sense of something that, at first, is seemingly incomprehensible. Students had a checklist of things to find on each map. Each set of students had a rural map (for determining elevation) and an urban map (for deciphering symbols). What made it even more exciting is that the urban maps are all of the Jenkintown area. Many students were able to find AFS, their homes or familiar parks on the maps they were observing. As we studied the maps, we talked about concepts such as scale and direction of North. Students used dry-erase markers to actually circle everything they found on their maps, and then shared their findings with classmates.
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