Describes how orientation maps can be incorporated into geographic slide lectures to keep students mindful of spatial relationships. (AM)

Argues that map skills instruction is among the broadest skill applications in the elementary school curriculum. Identifies problems encountered by elementary school children in dealing with maps and describes tasks designed to address such problems. Suggests that what teachers and curriculum developers learn from working with students can be used…

The computer packages of PLOTALL, SYMAP, SURFACE II, QUSMO, QUSMO2, QUCRS, and QUTAB are commercially available plotting programs that provide aids for visualizing spatial distributed data and concepts. The incremental drum and line printer plots communicate often vast and difficult-to-interpret tabular data with or without geographic coordinates.…

Presents a distance and time map exercise designed as a crime scenario. Explains that students must determine whether one individual could have committed a series of crimes in a given time period. Includes graph production that gives practice in interpreting and expressing aspects of spatial information. (DK)

Discusses sketch maps that are free-hand maps drawn from memory that help to organize spatial information. Demonstrates how teachers can use sketch map activities in their classrooms and provides examples of students' maps that illustrate progressive levels of learning world place location. (DB)

Investigates two questions: (1) the sex-related differences in Landsat Mastery, road map reading, and map drawing among adolescents and (2) the relationship between spatial ability and mapping skills. Replicates significantly lower female performance on parts of the Landsat tasks. Concludes that spatial ability correlations with mapping are too…

Describes a series of learning activities that can be done at home using everyday household materials. The activities are designed to illustrate components of the Five Fundamental Themes of geography education to students in grades K-5. They all require organizing, analyzing, and interpreting geographic information. (MJP)

The concept of location is a first step in spatial thinking, one of the multiple intelligences and an historical and social science analysis skill listed in the California Academic Content Standards for History-Social Science. Based on what they learned in kindergarten and first grade about mapping their classroom and the playground, students…

Reintroduces and updates the geographic profile as a visualization technique for representing and analyzing the structure of geographical information. A computer software-generated profile focuses on specific information (persons per square mile in selected cities) and represents that information spatially on a graph. (MJP)