After drawing the maps, each group stopped to reflect and make a list of things that were missing. They also talked together about whether anything they added really didn't belong.
After studying a map of Brooklyn that Watson brought to share a few days later, the children tried drawing a map of Hoboken that used some of the strategies that we were finding were common to the maps we have seen. We looked at the areas that were blue and green, the water and parks. The children knew that Hoboken has some water and that the Hudson River is on the edge of Hoboken. They drew the river and colored it blue first. Then they added a park or two.
"What else do you see on this map?" I asked the children. They noticed that each park area also had words written in it. Those who are ready to explore invented spelling began sounding out words as they labelled the some of the areas of the map. When a child did not know how to write a particular letter, someone else who can write this letter already offered to help.
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| "Stevens Park" |
As we are working toward being more accurate in spatial understanding and representation, I decided to ask the students to explore mapping with a more immediate and simple setting. On Wednesday, children drew maps of the classroom. They enjoyed thinking about what parts of the classroom they could show with simple shapes. There is still work to do in terms of representing the placement of objects in an order that reflects their actual organization. We hope to take a walk in the next several days to study the organization of Willow Avenue in order to try mapping accurately again.
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| "I was thinking of a couple of windows but then I added a lot of windows." |
In this work, children are beginning to understand abstract symbolic systems. They are also developing a framework for their understanding of what makes a city a city and a more accurate mental schema for this actual city.
