Online Geography Resources

Mapping Skills

Starter

How many of the states of the United States of America can you locate on a map? Play a game to warm up?

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Activities

Aim of this lesson:

To understand the requirements when producing maps.

Map Conventions

Title - what does the map show?
Scale - to show you have an idea of the size of the country!
Key / Legend - to clearly explain your use of styles and colours
Border - a box around your map
Direction - a compass rose showing at least North
Reference - where did you get the map and data from?
"No floating countries" - does it look like the location you have drawn is floating in space? Are they bordering countries?

Annotated Maps

Annotating maps requires students to include comments on the map itself and to place these comments in the relevant locations. Comments added after the maps are not acceptable. Common problems tend to be that students produce small, untidy, inaccurate maps that are not located and lack orientation.

The following is a well annotated map showing the population distribution of Brazil:

Task

Produce an annotated map that shows the distribution of McDonald's in the contiguous United States.

Visualization of the contiguous United States, coloured by distance to the nearest domestic McDonalds

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