To describe a pattern of spatial organization, you must first break the pattern into its simplest components: points, lines, and areas. This lesson uses a local service business—pizza restaurants—to introduce these components to students.

Geography, social studies, science, language arts, math, economics

Standard 3: "How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth's surface"

Two to three hours

• Local telephone book
• Photocopies of local maps
• Pencils

Students will

• analyze Earth's surface according to the spatial elements of points, lines, and areas; and
• use a simple map to identify features in terms of spatial elements—e.g., the location of a restaurant (point), roads and sidewalks (lines), and the city blocks or the region served by a restaurant (area).

Introduce the key words for this lesson: "point," "line," and "area."

Explain that a geographer considering the relationship between a restaurant and its customers might regard the restaurant's location as a point, the streets traveled to get to that restaurant as lines, and the surrounding neighborhood (residents of which eat at the restaurant) as an area.

Ask students where restaurants that serve pizza are located in your community and why they are located where they are. Have them estimate how many pizzerias are listed in a telephone book that serves your community. Record these estimates.

Collect data by distributing local telephone books to groups of students. Instruct students to read, review, and count pizzeria listings. Have them record the addresses of the restaurants.

Provide students with photocopies of local maps. Have students, either in groups or as a class, locate and mark the pizzerias with one symbol. Have the students locate and mark their homes with another symbol. Be sure to locate and mark the school. They have now identified a group of points.

Locate the pizza restaurant closest to the school. Mark the route that a student might take to get to the restaurant. Are several routes possible, such as sidewalks, parallel streets, or a subway? Look at the locations of the students' homes. What routes can the students take from their homes to the closest pizzeria?

Have students draw the best path between their homes and this restaurant. The sidewalks, streets, subways, and so on that might form these routes are all examples of lines.

Determine who lives near which pizzeria. Draw a loose circle around the region including a single pizzeria and nearby student homes. Do the same for the school and a nearby pizzeria. Each circle encompasses an area of potential pizza customers. Is there more than one pizzeria in town and thus more than one circle? If so, do these circles overlap—that is, is there competition among pizzerias in your town?

Analyze the pattern on the drawn maps. Be sure that students understand that locations of interest may be regarded as points and that lines connect these points. A region of similarity—in this case, those homes or other locations that are served by a single restaurant—is an area. Within an area, can students offer alternative paths between points?

Discuss land use and infrastructure patterns (e.g., networks of roads, bridges, and so on) with your class.

Students should be able to ask geographic questions about other kinds of services in the community—e.g., the locations of gas stations or grocery stores. Have students estimate the number of one or several of such local services and compare those figures to the number of local pizzerias. They should be able to locate the sites and the routes to the sites. Students should be prepared to explain why the area served by a gas station or a grocery store may be smaller than that served by a pizzeria. Have the students give several routes from school to one of the closest stores or service stations.

• If possible, split the class into groups and, using different routes, take a walk from the school to a selected pizzeria. Upon arrival at the restaurant, all groups can compare routes and determine if one is shorter, faster, or safer. Then have lunch!
  
  
• Have students take their maps home and, with their families, discuss the route that a driver would use to travel to the same pizzeria. Is this the same route that the students included on their maps? Why or why not? (Perhaps the driver always stops at a particular store for soda before going to the restaurant.)
  
  
• Discuss some of the other factors that influence the choice of pizzeria, especially quality and price. How do they affect the patterns you've discerned? And how is the decision affected by the option of having the pizza delivered?

Donna LaRoche of Winn Brook School in Belmont, Massachusetts, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 3.

About.com Latitude and Longitude
National Geographic: Maps and Geography Guide
USGS Mapping