JDMcDsblog

First Years have been learning about maps, and in particular looking at the idea of their personal geography and mental maps.  Everyone has a mental map in their head-if you shut your eyes you can still see places and you can work out how to get from one A to B. You can visualise places and begin to get a picture in your mind of where they are. Often your sense of direction improves, for example everyone in the class could point to the where the Science Block is even when it is not visible from my room. How?

We also looked at the idea of scale. Now with Google map, or multimap, we tend to scroll up or down a scale bar, a plus sign at one end a negative at the other. Sliding the bar allows us to zoom in for more detail; zooming out to cover more area. This becomes more complex as you get older, as your knowledge and experience of where places are develops. Classes have been experimenting with drawing mental maps of their home areas and we shall publish some examples. After drawing the mental map, you had to write up the things  you found easy and difficult about this exercise. Did you put in too much detail, eg lots of little trees, or chimneys on houses? Did you start with your house and draw the map around it, or did you decide in advance what streets you were going to include? Did you exaggerate the size of your house to make it look bigger? Did you draw the houses in correct scale, ie did the size of the houses match the width of the roads and other features you included? What information did you leave out of the map? Why? Did you use colour or symbols?

This becomes more complex as you get older, as your knowledge and experience of where places are develops. Classes have been experimenting with drawing mental maps of their home areas and we shall publish some examples. After drawing the mental map, you had to write up the things  you found easy and difficult about this exercise. Did you put in too much detail, eg lots of little trees, or chimneys on houses? Did you start with your house and draw the map around it, or did you decide in advance what streets you were going to include?

Did you exaggerate the size of your house to make it look bigger?

Did you draw the houses in correct scale, ie did the size of the houses match the width of the roads and other features you included? What information did you leave out of the map? Why? Did you use colour or symbols?

Further information

Click here for more information about mental maps.