Recently my third grade class paired up with Mrs. Lisa Whittaker at the Bolton School in Bolton, U.K. to do a lesson on community cartography.

Every community is composed of social, environmental and spatial elements; however, we often stop paying attention to these features because they are so familiar. These are the things that truly make our school special and unique.

The class did field work around campus to identify key features of our Gilman School community and created a simple map to help our new buddy class in the U.K. understand our lives.

During our first video call, we shared details – but not the map – and used our knowledge of the cardinal directions to help the Bolton school students “see” our community for the first time. The boys at the Bolton School listened to our directions and drew a map of Gilman. On our next call, our boys will listen to the Bolton students and draw their school maps. We will then compare our similarities and differences. You can watch their first video here.

The lesson goals include:

• Map construction of both familiar and unfamiliar communities
• Use maps and satellite images to explain relationships between locations
• Practice perspective-taking by exploring how culture influences the way people modify and adapt to their environments
• Connect to others through respectful, open-minded listening and speaking.

This will be an ongoing relationship and the boys in 3C look forward to learning more about our new friends at the Bolton School!

~Contributed by Zaccai Williams