Classroom Session 3
Mapping our feelings
What can we work out about our local area from an aerial photograph?
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Here is how this session was taught:
Learning Objectives
To reintroduce the idea that maps can be used to record how we feel about places; to encourage children to explore a wider range of emotions than just 'happy' or 'sad'.
Learning Outcomes
For the children to have identified four or five places in the school or grounds and to have written a sentence to describe how they feel in each of the places. (They will go on to use these ideas when they complete their personal digital map of the school grounds.)
Resources
- Quikmaps.
- Paper copy of outline map of the school
- Thesaurus
Organisation
Whole class group with support from class learning assistant and SLA's for children with autism.
Teaching the session
We begin with a very settled session as the children realise that we are going to begin with the Quikmaps aerial view of the locality. The map displayed by Quikmaps can be 'dragged' around on the IWB and this enables us to look at different places adjacent to the school and then to zoom in so close that we can see cars parked in driveways. All of the children are highly engaged in this session.
I re-visit the idea of recording a range of feelings on the map. I share some of the sentences that I have written in my own Quikmap and talk about how one of these could now be changed because I no longer have any problems finding my way into their school. Through this we explore the idea that some feelings are quite short lived while others last longer.
I ask the children to choose one place in the school grounds that is their favourite place and to tell their partner how it makes them feel and why. They are then asked to draw a symbol on their paper map and write a simple sentence to describe their feeling about that place.
We explore 'feeling' words using a panel from the Usborne Thesaurus.
Their favourite places are reported on positively, as you might expect, while their least favourite places provide some pretty clichéd answers about school, especially from some boys. On reflection I feel that we need more time to actually go out into the grounds and talk about the different places we find there. This would enable children to think how they directly experience each of these places and what each place means to them personally.
Where next?
In the next session we return to our partially completed digital maps and add information about how we 'feel' in different places.
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