Lesson Plans - Maps and Current Events

Check out:
X3: World Viewer

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

- The Riddle of the Russian Lights

Overview:

This lesson will help students realize the value of maps in illustrating important news topics other than weather forecasts. They'll brainstorm geographic questions for specific news stories and use an atlas along with National Geographic's MapMachine to help them find answers to these questions. They'll conclude by creating "map packages" to accompany additional news stories, including at least five maps that illustrate points and background information related to the story.

Connections to the Curriculum:

Geography

Connections to the National Geography Standards:

Standard 1: "How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective"
Standard 3: "How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places, and environments on Earth's surface"
Standard 18: "How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future"

Time:

Two to three hours

Materials Required:

Print atlas
Computer with Internet access

Objectives:

Students will

list national or international news stories;
read about one news story and summarize it in a paragraph;
list geographic questions about the news story;
use a print atlas and the National Geographic MapMachine to find maps to help answer their questions;
discuss how maps can help them understand current events; and
create "map packages" to illustrate another news story.

Geographic Skills:

Asking Geographic Questions
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Answering Geographic Questions
Analyzing Geographic Information

S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e

Opening:

Begin by introducing students to the National Geographic MapMachine. Explain that this Web feature allows them to create and view maps about a variety of themes around the world.

Have them click "View All Map Categories" on the lower left and look at the page showing the available maps and categories.

Explain that they can link into each of these map categories to create maps showing various themes at different scales. For example, have them click "Annual Temperature, World" under the "Trip Planning" category.

They'll see a colored map of the world. Have them click and drag a rectangle around the approximate area of their home state to zoom in on that region. They can then click on "Map Legend" above the map to see what the different colors represent. When they close out of the Map Legend window, they can use the bar to the right of the map to zoom in or out.

Have students use their browser's back button to return to the list of maps, and ask them to spend a minute or two looking at the different maps and categories available on this page. As they examine the list, ask them to think about how these maps might help them understand current events and news stories, and discuss their ideas as a class.

Development:

Ask the class to name and list at least five stories that are currently being covered in the national or international news. Some examples might include Middle Eastern conflicts, political campaigns, or environmental controversies.

Divide the class into small groups, and ask each group to choose one of the news stories they've listed, or assign news stories to groups so the stories are distributed evenly throughout the class.

Have each group find a very recent article about its news event from the newspaper or one of the following online news sources:

National Geographic News
CNN
BBC News

Ask groups to summarize their articles in a short paragraph.

Have groups brainstorm geographic questions related to their news stories, and ask them to list as many questions as they can think of. Examples might include:

Where are things happening? Exactly where on Earth are the places in the article located?
How do terrain and climate affect what's going on?
How might these events affect the environment, including plants and animals that live near where the events are occurring?

Ask each group to come up with at least ten geographic questions.

Have students use a print atlas to locate the places that are affected by the news event they're studying. Ask them to look at their list of geographic questions and check the ones that can be answered by looking at the atlas.

Ask them to write answers to the questions that the print atlas helps answer. Even if the atlas helps them make "educated guesses" rather than providing definitive answers, they should record the answers prefaced with statements like "it appears that" or "according to the map in the atlas."

Have students return to National Geographic's MapMachine and search for maps that can help shed light on the remaining questions from their lists. Ask them to list the maps they create and to answer as many questions on their list as the possible after examining the maps. Each group should be able to find at least three maps that can help them answer their questions, even if the answers are "educated guesses."

Closing:

Discuss the following questions as a class:

How do maps help us understand current events?
How helpful was the atlas in answering your geographic questions?
How helpful was the MapMachine in answering your geographic questions?
Where might you go to answer the questions that could not be answered by looking at the maps?

Suggested Student Assessment:

Have students, either in groups, pairs, or individually, choose another international, national, or local current event. Ask them to familiarize themselves with the story by reading at least two articles about it.

Have students think about and list the types of maps that would be most helpful in understanding this news story (e.g., political maps in the atlas, thematic maps, satellite images, topographic maps, street maps).

Have each student or group make a "map package" to accompany the articles they've read. This package should consist of at least five maps that illustrate what's occurring and that shed light on background information related to the news story. Some questions the maps might help address include:

How might climate and landscape affect the outcome of this news story?
Which cities, states, or regions are the most heavily affected?
What religions are practiced (and/or what languages are spoken) in the areas affected by this news story?
What routes will or should the people involved in the news story take?
How likely is the occurrence of a natural disaster (e.g., an earthquake) in this part of the world, and what effect might this disaster have on the events that are unfolding?
What is the population density of this region and how might population density impact, or be affected by, the current events?

Ask students to print their maps and write captions explaining how each one helps illuminate a point related to the news story. In addition to using the atlas and the MapMachine, students might want to use the blank maps which are available on National Geographic's Xpeditions Atlas. As an option, allow one of the "map package" maps to be a blank map that students draw on to illustrate points they've learned in the articles.

Have student share their news stories and maps with the class.

Extending the Lesson:

Have students use the National Geographic Wild World Terrestrial Ecoregions site to help them better understand what the local landscape of their selected news story looks like. They can click and drag a rectangle around the relevant area and then read about the environment in that region.
Have students look for maps in newspapers and newsmagazines. When they find a map that accompanies an article, ask them to summarize the article in a short paragraph and to write additional sentences describing what the map shows and explaining whether they think the map is helpful. Ask them to suggest additional maps they'd make to accompany the article if they were the "official" newspaper mapmakers.