Map Inquiry

A member of the school board was curious about inquiry and was able to take some time to pop into Room 408 to see what we were up to.  When he came we were doing a maps mini-inquiry.  The class and I had collected various maps for our inquiry--some students brought in atlases, some brought Wisconsin maps, and some even brought in a map from our recent field trip to the Children's Museum!

When we first immersed ourselves in maps, we were so intrigued with our personal place on our planet.  Students were really focused on finding their houses on google maps.

This led to us noticing that we could get a "street view" as well as a "bird's eye view."  Some students created these views of their houses, of the Statue of Liberty, their neighborhoods, their bedrooms, and even a table in our classroom!  

Some students started noticing that maps have little pictures or symbols on them to help us find places.  We found the map keys or "legends" which told us what these little pictures meant.

Today we had a map symbol scavenger hunt and found lots of cool symbols in just 20 minutes!

Maps help us find out about places in our world!