Main areas covered in this section:
- Using a compass.
- Scale, direction and grid reference.
In this section children learn about scale, direction and grid reference. The teacher should clarify these points below:
- Knowing about scale helps us to work out distances on a map. This can be shown to be useful when going on journeys or calculating races etc.
- Learning how to work out north, south, east and west in important to know the direction that you are travelling in.
- Understanding grid reference makes it much faster to find places on a map.
Children are shown some examples of how scale is to be understood.
- Some simple examples show 1cm: 1 km
- Commonly used scales are indicated 1: 50,000
- Children are shown that this represents 1 cm : 150 metres
- 1: 210,000 is shown to represent 1 cm: 2.1 km
- The differences between small-scale and large scale maps are explained.
Activities on scale: Children are asked to estimate distances on a map using scale.
Quiz about distances between houses depicted in a drawing
2. Compass points:Direction and compass points explained through use of an interactive compass . Children complete some activities on finding direction.
3. Grid ReferencesIt is explained in simple terms how a grid reference is a combination of two numbers that identify a position on a map. Children might be asked about the value of this. A "treasure map" might be shown to the class so that they could try to locate particular objects in certain parts of a grid.
Background to reading a grid reference:
One number counts across from left to right (west to east) - this is the easting. The second number counts up from bottom to top (south to north) this is the northing. The grid reference is the easting, followed by the northing.
Activity: National grid reference game
Background: the national grid splits Ireland up into 5 x 5 = 25 grid squares. Each square has a letter of the alphabet (expect for the letter I which is omitted).
Children are asked to find particular places on the national grid.