Position
In Early Stage 1, students look at their familiar surroundings and down on games. They will play with cars and dolls and move them around a play mat, their own constructed town or in their imagination. Children enjoy being part of a story map of a familiar story such as Little Red Riding Hood, and The Lion and the Castle.
Children can draw familiar places but they might find it easier to imagine the position of whole objects like the houses in the street than the objects inside their bedroom which they also inside.
From a study of 50 students in Years 1 to 5, Owens and Geoghegan (1999) found the following developments. The pictures (Figures 9 – 11) illustrate some of the ways map drawing develops. They also found a significant correlation with spatial thinking as tested on items similar to those in chapter 1.
Task: Map to School
Draw a map showing how you come to school. Include any shops, buildings, streets or interesting features. Explain your map and your route.
Development of skills
- knows meaning of place and movement words, draws or acts it
- demonstrates betweenness, opposite, other directions
- places in order and with betweenness
- shows right angles, parallel lines, left/right
- makes a plan, interprets its use; uses language for sequence of movements
- predicts sequence by visualising, good degree of accuracy of lengths
Figure 9. A map graded as 1. Figure 10. Map graded at 3.
Figure 11. Map graded at 5.
Learning Tasks for Readers
Mapping and Position Activities 1
/- As a class, play the party game where a student is able to “read the minds” of the class who select one square in a 3 x 3 grid of squares.
- Discuss the way each square is a map of the whole grid. This is the clue for the “apprentice” reading the mind of the wizard.
- Also discuss the idea of length ratio and area ratio.
- Use the Early Childhood mat and toys to note what position words young children use when playing. Read articles by Macmillan and Rogers on the mathematics in early childhood.
- Share a number of simple songs and bush dances requiring children to use position words, for example, Put your right foot in, put your left foot in
- Draw your foot by looking down.
- Draw your bedroom.
- Place a large sheet of butcher’s paper on the table. Make a model of your teaching buildings using the cartons. Outline the blocks to make the map and remove the blocks.
- Stand on the second storey and draw a map of the floor or ground below.
- Look around the buildings and find examples of unidimensional grids and two-dimensional grids.
- Make up a treasure island map and use a dice – one with letters and one with numbers - to see who first digs in the place of the hidden treasure. (Its coordinates can be known by the current group leader).
- Using yourselves as labels on axes, one student can ask different students to stand at certain points while the class tries to guess what shape is to be made. Students can hold a rope to mark out the shape that is formed.
- Stylise your initials on grid paper and give the coordinates to draw it.
- If you work in a predominantly Indigenous community, you could work with the community to make a map of the area of traditional land occupied by the Indigenous community encouraging the elders to share appropriate knowledge about the place with the students.
- Alternatively you could develop a map that tourists could use to see the sights of the town.
- Look at a range of maps from around the world. Consider how you can read a map in another language. Look at Aboriginal maps, train maps, tourist maps etc.
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- Look at the young children’s maps above. What developments do you notice?
- Discuss the development of language and maps.
- Look at the syllabus to see how mapping activities develop
- Look at the Basic Skills Test questions and analysis on mapping in the chapter by Owens in Doig and Lokan’s Learning from Children. Discuss the outcomes being assessed by the task. How do these relate to position?
- Discuss the issue of coordinates. Why do some students find them difficult? Prepare a good sequence of activities to help.
Learning Tasks for Readers
Mapping and Position Activities 2
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Play robots to give directions around the building. It is best if you stand behind the robot when giving commands. Decide on types of commands first. E.g. full turn, half turn, quarter turn or turn right 45°, 60° etc.- Play robots to make an equilateral triangle using only right hand turns. Discuss the space concepts involved. Try this on Drape or Logo.
- Give your partner directions to the nearest railway station.
- Guess then check where North is. Now give directions for a number of landmarks that you can see and others you cannot see using the 4 or 8 major compass points.
- Try giving the degrees from north of a number of things that you can currently see.
- In this BST question, what might be difficult for students?
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- Discuss how some students might find it difficult to turn and get a sense of direction.
- Discuss the difficulties students might have with compass point directions.
Learning Tasks for Readers
Mapping and Position Activities 3
/- Look again at the lesson on enlarging shapes. Discuss the idea of length ratio and area ratio.
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- Discuss why the idea of ratio is difficult for students. For example, why might it be difficult for them to understand a map ratio of 1: 100.
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- Look back over the Syllabus outcomes for position. Make a note of various experiences that you would consider crucial for students to achieve each outcome.