Mapping Change:
Using maps of Davidson, NC to investigate how communities change over time.
Grade Level:
4th or 8th
Standards:
North Carolina Essential Standards
4.H.1.3 Explain how people, events and developments brought about changes to communities in various regions of N.C.
8.H.3.2 Explain how changes brought about by technology and other innovations affected individuals and groups in North Carolina and the United States (e.g. advancements in transportation, communication networks and business practices).
Objective:
Students will use maps of Davidson, NC from the Davidson College Library’s Archive and Special Collection to investigate how communities evolve over time. Students will be required to practice their map reading skills, collaborate meaningfully with their peers, and engage in critical thinking.
Background:
Map reading is an essential Social Studies skill that helps students learn to analyze various text-types and begin to think critically about the world around them. In this lesson, students will use two maps from the Davidson College Library’s Archive to extend their thinking beyond the geographic representations on a map and begin to make inferences about the communities the map represents. To do this, students will compare a 1927 map of Davidson, NC to a 2002 visitor’s map of the same town.
This lesson is aligned with both fourth and eighth grade North Carolina Essential Standards and can easily be adapted for either grade.
Essential Questions:
How do communities change over time?
How can students use maps to learn about society?
Vocabulary:
Absolute location: a point on a map or globe expressed as the intersection of lines of latitude and longitude.
Relative location: a point or place in relation to another point or place
Infrastructure: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)
Economy: the system of how money is made and used within a particular country or region.
Society: people in general thought of as living together in organized communities with shared laws, traditions, and values
Lesson Materials:
- Teacher background reading: “The Lake that Changed the Landscape”
- Lake Norman Timeline: “A Walk Through Time”
- Teacher computer with projector
- Mapping Change Presentation
- Student computers
- Map Analysis Worksheet
- Assessment Materials: Exit Slip, Cartoon Comparisons, Quick Response
Lesson Activities:
1.Warm Up: Why do we use maps? (project the question for students to respond in their notebooks).
Provide approximately five minutes for students to think and brainstorm situations in which they or their parents have used maps. Many students associate maps with their functional role in travel. Use this time to explain that maps can tell us more than absolute or relative location and that from maps we can learn about a community’s values, interests, economy and way of life.
2. Map Analysis: Place students in pairs to analyze and discuss the maps in the Mapping Change Presentation. Have each group complete the Map Analysis Worksheet to encourage a deep investigation of the maps and to allow students time to discuss and process the map’s content. For quality results, allow approximately twenty minutes for students to read the maps and complete the worksheet. Encourage them to zoom in on the images to better see detail.
3. Class Debriefing: Moving from pairs to whole group, draw a Venn Diagram on the board to compare the two maps of Davidson. Call on students to describe the town in each year and to identify similarities and differences. Use the Lake Norman Timeline to briefly introduce students to the lake, it’s purpose and time frame of its creation. Guide students to better understand how geographic, political, social, economic, cultural, and racial factors shape a community over time by having them categorize what they have placed on the Venn Diagram. Help the students use the creation of Lake Norman to contextualize the various changes they have already identified. Ask them to identify any term on the Venn Diagram that describes geographic change. Go through and highlight each of these terms with a different colored marker. Have students copy this Venn Diagram in their notebooks.
4. Assessment: Multiple options for assessment are provided below based on student readiness.
- Exit Slip: How do communities change over time? Allow students to simply bullet point their responses.
- Cartoon Comparisons: Students will answer the question, “How can maps help us learn about communities?” by drawing two representations of what they think life was like in Davidson in 1927 compared to 2002. This will help them personalize and bring the images on a map to life.
- Quick Response: How can maps show us more than simply where things are? This short answer gives students the opportunity to reflect on how their examination of the two Davidson maps helped them better understand the community and way of life.