Classroom Maps Project

Because the integrated unit we are working on includes the use of maps, we used our metric measuring and conversion skills to create a map of our classroom (as I mentioned the other day). The most challenging aspect of this was choosing a scale, which ended up being 2cm = 1 m, for most students. A few students decided on a different scale for their maps, which was fine....they made good choices.

Some of the students kept their maps simple, meeting the basic requirements, while others included a greater number of items from the room than they needed to.

Overall, I was pleased with the way that everything turned out - students did well with the initial measuring, converted correctly, and drew their maps correctly to scale (with some guidance....we did most of the work in the classroom to avoid confusion at home).

A few things I would change about the way we worked on this:

Initially, I did not tell them to measure in meters, but they ended up having to convert everything to meters because we needed the measurements to be in meters for the scale. So, on my task sheet, below, I added the instruction to measure in meters.

After students converted their measurements to meters, they had to multiply by 2 in order to find how many cm to actually draw on their maps. I did not have a space for this, so their work ended up looking pretty messy! I added a new column for that on the task sheet for next year.

Now, I just have to grade all of the maps!

Click to download activity and grade sheet.

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