Title: The Importance of Teaching Children to Read Maps
Headings: The Importance of Teaching Children to Read Maps
The Importance of Teaching Children to Read Maps
Subscribe to ArcNews
Subscribe
Explore
Contribute

Content: The fundamental lesson of this research is consistent with research on skill acquisition across the curriculum: children should be presented with challenging tasks that demand that they learn new skills but do not overwhelm them with challenges that are too numerous or complex. They should also be provided with enough assistance to identify and correct errors and given enough opportunities to practice skills across a range of challenges sufficient for them to achieve full mastery. This specific research helps teachers understand in advance what their students will find challenging, select appropriate tasks, and guide students to overcome specific difficulties or misconceptions. Essentially, this research helps teachers understand what most of us have so much trouble understanding—what looking at a map is like for someone who has not yet mastered one or more aspects of map reading. Research on teaching across many subjects has shown that teachers are much more effective when they have this information. Imagine a second grader who is struggling to master the difficult task of determining relative direction on a map. For most of us, it is hard to imagine confusing something being on the left side of a map with something being on the left side of a location in the world. The Alliance Network materials being developed can help the teacher anticipate this confusion and diagnose the reason that our second grader is consistently making mistakes when giving directions based on a map. The teacher would also know what kinds of explanations, examples, and additional tasks to provide to help a student overcome this common misconception.