Had a great day today teaching at Derbyshire Ecocentre on a course called Improve your map reading. In the classroom session we had a go at drawing a ‘map’ of the room we were meeting in. The result was that 100% of the class ‘orientated’ the map as they drew it. In order words the drawing aligned exactly to the features in the room. We discussed how this probably meant that it will be easier to read a map when it is aligned to the terrain – or orientated.
We then discovered that these maps had been draw at different scales – anything from 1: 32 to 1:102. We recognised that the higher the number in a map scale scale the smaller the area of the map!
After all this sitting down and chatting we booted up and Andrea, Ruth, Christine, Jeff and Jeremy set off for Middleton Moor. There was plenty of feature noting, and route finding including a section where we found the route without any line features to follow.
Lots of good feedback but next week we meet again and the skills will really be put to the test!
March 28, 2011 at 19:50 |
Hi. I was one of the pupils who enrolled on the map reading course yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed the day. Especially when we got booted up and walked to Middleton Moor. I always find I learn a lot more by actually “doing” and getting hands on experience instead of sitting in the classroom. It was good to meet new people and Alastair is a very good and interesting teacher. Can’t wait to learn more next week.
Christine Collick