Day 8: Giant Map of Canada

Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4 Day 5 & 6

Classes on the map today: 6

Plotting Voyageur route from Atlantic Ocean to Alberta

School: Irvine School; K-9 with approximately 280 students

What I learned today was that a longer period of giant map time allows for activities to be more successful. At Irvine School, the fourth-grade classes had each booked a double period and there were single time 35-minute slots with two sixth-grade classes, a fifth-grade class and a 1-2 split class.

When I realized that I was getting a double period with a small grade 4 class with only 12 students present today, I knew that this would be the perfect opportunity to retry my grade four scavenger hunt/puzzle of our province, Alberta. This especially worked since this class came with the teacher, an education assistant, and a preservice teacher. We had time to do other curriculum-related activities like use the plastic chains to plot the voyageur river routes from the Atlantic to the prairies.

We started this grade four scavenger hunt activity with a mini-lesson on latitude and longitude. On this map, the latitude and longitude lines are identified by even numbers, so every second degree gets a line. The students had been introduced to latitude and longitude previously, so as they worked in pairs, usually at least one student could work out the clues. Clues relied on latitude and longitude, and two independent maps with additional locations named, such as provincial and national parks. The answers were guided by fill-in-the-letter spaces; each answer had a letter in a box that would contribute to a final word clue. The grade four Social Studies curriculum focuses on Alberta, so all clues were in Alberta.

The ultimate issue with this activity is space. With enough time, the clues are a challenge but are realistic. With 12 students in this class trying to work in the Alberta space on the map, it was tight, but JUST worked out.

Plotting latitude and longitude locations of electricity generation in Canada

When the next grade four class came with twenty students, I knew that space-wise, the Alberta activity was not feasible. As this class also had a double period with the map, I took this opportunity to do an activity that I hadn’t yet had time to do. I have a set of about 75 ‘energy’ cards from the Natural Resources map lesson plans. Each card lists the town/city and province of an energy source, but also lists the latitude and longitude along with a picture. So after another mini-lesson on latitude and longitude, the students used the entire map to place the energy cards around the map. Each pair started with three cards. Most groups caught on quickly and were back for more cards. We placed all of the cards quite quickly but ran out of time to discuss and ask questions about patterns that emerged. This part of the lesson met my primary objective: practice identifying latitude and longitude as well as identifying the location of provinces.

The federal riding of Nunavut – 1 Member of Parliament representing approximately 40 000 people

Sixth grade is the real sweet spot for this map as the Social Studies curriculum covers representative democracy. Even though the curriculum focuses on municipal and provincial levels of government, many teachers also touch on the federal level of government terms. Both our provincial and federal levels of government are elected by representation by population, so this map, with its federal electoral district markings leads to a GREAT discussion about representation by population. Especially striking is the size of Nunavut and the fact that they get only one federal representative. Marking out the boundaries of Newfoundland (see image) is always a powerful activity so I try to work it in to most of the classes that come to visit the map.