Developing Maps

Providing opportunities for students to explore their geographical imaginations can be done through affective mapping. This supports the development of the global dimension concepts and students’ understanding of space, place and identity.

1. Initial stimulus

Students first complete the Multiple identities sheet in answer to the question ‘What places do I connect with?’. They should quickly realise that they connect with and form relationships with different places on different occasions. Then, encourage them to think about how an understanding of place may help them become informed and active global citizens.

2. Mediation of geographical understanding

Students choose one place, or part of a place, that they ‘connect with’ and use the affective mapping worksheet to illustrate it. This gets them thinking more deeply about a place and their own connections with it.

3. Making sense of the matter

The students use their maps as a thinking scaffold for developing and sharing their ‘sense of place’ with others. This contributes to the development of citizenship, interdependence, values and perceptions and social justice aspects of the global dimension.

4. Refining thinking

Explain to the students how to search the internet for images of the world through maps to encourage pupils to think critically about how maps represent meaning. This supports the students’ spatial literacy and awareness of the ways that maps can be used (and abused).

5. Reflection

Ask students to think about occasions when maps could be used to transmit a particular view. Thus considering maps as a resource, maps as (sometimes unreliable) evidence, and the way maps convey the ‘voice’ of the cartographer.

Affective mapping can also be used in Developing empathy and understanding – students can consider how a particular person might feel about a specific place.