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Goals:

1.  To help students understand how to use longitude and latitude lines to find a designated location on a map.

Materials:

Red and any other color yarn

3x5 cards with points of latitude and longitude listed

Scissors

A map of the world for each student

Cardboard

Colored paper

Markers

Time:

Between four hours, thirty minutes and six hours

Procedure:

1.  Cut pieces of yarn to form the latitude and longitude lines on the floor of the classroom.  Use the tiled squares on the floor, if possible, to form equidistant latitude lines.

2.  Tape each piece of yarn to the floor.

3.  Use the red yarn to show the Prime Meridian and the Equator. Those are the only lines that are labeled.

4.  Discuss the use of this combination of parallels and meridians to form a grid for plotting positions anywhere in the world.

5.  Form the students into groups and give each group a card that has points of latitude and longitude listed and a matching colored circle.

6.  The group must place the colored circle on the grid showing the location listed on the card.

7.  In order to reinforce the concepts of longitude and latitude, the class will participate in the following game.

Directions to game:

1.  The person who is "it" finds a specific location on his/her world map which he/she wants the players to guess and places a marker there.

2.  This map will be blocked from the players' view by a make-shift divider such as a piece of wood or a large piece of cardboard.

3.  The players ask questions that can be answered yes or no leading to where the location is.

4.  Players use pieces of cardboard to mark off areas on their copy of the world map when they eliminate it as the desired location.

Example of questioning process:
 

1. Are you an ocean?........................................................no
2. Are you an island?........... ...........................................yes
3. Are you south of the equator?............................................no
(Players cover everything south with cardboard.)

4. Are you west of the prime meridian?......................................yes

(Players cover everything east with cardboard.)

5. Are you between 60 degrees west and 80 degrees north?....................yes
6. Are you west of 60 degrees west longitude?...............................no
7. Are you between 0 degrees and 30 degrees west?...........................yes
8. Are you Iceland?.........................................................yes

If only two players are playing, then keep track of points/number of questions it takes to get the answer. After  each has 3 turns,  the one with the least points is the winner.Ý This makes it more challenging for the person who is "it" to think of a difficult place to guess.

Assessment:

1.  Evaluate the student's success in finding their longitude and latitude points on the yarn grid. (Criteria for success = each group successfully locates 80% of the points on the yarn grid).

2.  Have students match specific longitude and latitude points with specific locations. (Criteria for success = eight out of ten locations correct).

Curricular Strands and Major Concepts:

1.  Social Studies - Geography Standards and learning to locate many places in the world

2.Ý Mathematics - learning to plot minutes, degrees and seconds.

Possible Extensions:

1.  Students can keep their own map and keep track of the locations where the books they read take place.

2.  Teacher might want to discuss the new technology of Global Position Satellites.

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Coral Reefs - developed by Kristen Treadway, Jenny Mavis, T. J. Beck, & Jim O'Keefe

This page submitted by the St. Norbert College Ocean Voyager Program

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