Published: September 21, 2009 07:08 am      

Students step out in geography class

FHS classes walk their way to learning on giant map

Westwood — Valerie Ellis is standing in the middle of Hudson’s Bay, about five feet from a visitor in the vicinity of Kamloops, British Columbia.

Away down south, somewhere near the Tropic of Cancer, seventh-graders wait to take their place on the continent, a few steps in front of them.

The geographic feats are possible because Ellis is standing on a 26-by- 35 map on the gymnasium floor at Fairview High School.

All last week, Ellis and other Fairview teachers used the map to introduce students to geographic concepts. On loan from National Geographic, the giant map made geography a fun, interactive experience, Ellis said.

“It’s a way to visualize geography — landforms, latitude and longitude, bodies of water, cities and other landmarks,” she said.

Except for its size, the map looked just like one you might find inserted in the famous yellow-bordered magazine. It included the continental United States, the Hawaiian Islands and the Alaskan archipelago.

It took about 15 paces to hike from the tip of the Aleutians to Key West, and a tall man could lie down in California and reach the Mississippi River.

National Geographic sent along a trunk of accessories and lesson plans that provided a playful way to learn geography. In a game of “Simon Says,” students would lie down on Atlanta, put their fingers on a Caribbean island, sit in Mexico or stand south of a peninsula.

On Friday, they were finding the largest U.S. cities and comparing their populations during the past century.

Then Ellis, with her right foot planted in Mississippi and her left in Alabama, led a discussion about the Louisiana purchase and westward settlement and their effect on population trends.

“This is way funner than doing a worksheet,” said Cory Kearns, part of a four-student team in a race to locate cities. The size of the map is helpful in visualizing the geographic concepts, he said.

And it’s interactive, which makes it easier to learn, said Jocelyn Newhouse.

They and their teammates, Tammi Bailey and Samantha Bowen, found the oversized graphics made it easier to remember what they were looking at.

The highly accurate map is based on the National Geographic reference map series and on the North America map in the National Geographic Atlas of the World, eighth edition.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.