This teaching packet is for grades five through eight, and it is organized around geographic themes: location, place, relationships, movement, and regions. There are four full lessons that are complete with posters, weblinks, and...

Measurement and map skills are the focus of this lesson, where students crawl through a "cave" made out of boxes, desks and chairs, observing the dimensions.  Your young geographers measure various aspects of the cave and practice...

Here is a well-designed, very thorough lesson plan on mapping for very young children. Within the six-page plan, you will find everything you need to implement the lesson. They will identify various landforms found in Colorado on a map,...

Here is a simple assignment that will introduce your young geographers to location, one of the five themes of geography, through an activity in which they map the directions and lines of latitude/longitude of where they live. 

Introduce middle or high schoolers to topographic maps with this PowerPoint. After a review of longitude and latitude, display and describe contour lines and intervals. Also explain map scale. This is a useful presentation for a social...

How do you create a map of the ocean floor without getting wet? Middle school oceanographers discover the process of bathymetric mapping in the third installment in a five-part series of lessons designed for seventh and eighth graders....

A good concept map requires high thought processes. This makes it a great tool for teaching and evaluating your pupils. A helpful article describes a great approach for teaching young scholars the art of concept map building and how best...

How do you get to school? Using the second page of the worksheet, you can draw a map of your route to school and paste on images of a scooter, bus, car, or feet.

Sometimes it is difficult to grasp topographic maps. Here is a clever presentation designed to help your middle school earth scientists understand. Beginning with a side view of a pair of mountains, a graphic guy walks up one slope. As...

Here's an engaging, meaningful, and clever lesson plan on map skills for elementary schoolers. Pupils combine story writing with mapping skills to create an original piece of work. They utilize a worksheet embedded in the plan to guide...

Young scholars discuss resource maps and examine examples from library resources. Working in groups, they create edible resource maps by drawing examples, such as popcorn on the border of Iowa and Nebraska. Then they use cookies in the...

Show your class how to read a map and decipher all of the markings and features. Start out by connecting maps to their homework from the night before and their current reading, in this case That Book Woman, and a related informational...

Your young geographers will combine what they have learned about the five themes of geography and their inner creativity to design a physical map for an imaginary nation.

Sixth graders learn to plan a story by using a story map. They analyze a detailed sample story map and answer 5 questions about it. Then, plan their own story using a story map template.

Environmental science learners examine satellite imagery of temperature, vegetation, precipitation, and productivity. They use these maps to understand how scientists divide the planet into major biomes. As part of a larger unit on...

A series of maps depicts pre-WWI to post-WWII Europe for your geographers. They use reference materials to help them correctly fill in the countries and the borders as they changed through time. A great resource for a history lesson, or...

How do oceanographers make maps under water? Junior explorers discover the technologies and processes involved in creating bathymetric maps in part three of a five-part series designed for fifth- and sixth-grade pupils. The lesson...

Students explore the information depicted on topographic maps. They construct a 3-D topographic map of a local area. They go on a field trip to the depicted area and compare the 'real world' with their models.

Fifth graders investigate data from maps to solve problems. In this data instructional activity, 5th graders study maps and collect data from each map. Students present their data in a variety of ways and calculate the mode, mean,...

Young scholars brainstorm a list of the different types of maps they have seen or used. Using the activity sheet, they look through a social studies book to find all the maps and to determine what they are used for. Using a poster, they...

Students write directions explaining how to get from one location to another by using a map of their town and use simple maps to identify and locate places.

Students identify the characteristics of topographical maps. Using examples, they practice reading them and describing the information they gather from them. They also discover how to use the website from the U.S. Geological Survey.

In this blank outline map worksheet, students fill in the state capital, major cities, landforms, and other places of interest on this map of Wyoming.

Students examine the use of topographic maps as two dimensional representations that show elevations and slopes with contour lines. They read maps of the Salt Lake City, Utah area and complete the associated worksheets that show map...