Sixth-graders on the Odyssey Team at Hunt Middle School study the Strait of Magellan, the Andes mountains and the coast of Venezuela. / Courtesy photo
Sixth-graders of the Odyssey Team at Hunt Middle School in Burlington straddled the Strait of Magellan, walked up the spine of the Andes, and sat on the coast of Venezuela as they traveled to South America via a basketball court-sized map of the continent in Burlington last week.
The map, created by the National Geographic Society, measures 26 x 35 feet and is designed so students can amble around on foot to explore.
Students worked in teams in a series of interactive lessons and games designed to teach them about the physical features of the continent, population distribution, and river systems.
Kids and adults alike were in awe of the sheer size of the map, teacher Lee Orlando said. “Everyone was very excited to start walking on it, so our first activities were a set of games that got them moving about the map, taking in the over-sized features and lettering,” she said.
One lesson, called “The Hollow Continent” had students use interlocking blocks to build towers. Each tower’s height represented the population for a particular city, Orlando said.
As students built and placed the towers on the map, they could begin to see a pattern: The largest towers were located along the east and west coasts of the continent, with very few towers in the center.
“The whole experience was so visual and tactile,” Orlando said. “As a teacher, I loved seeing students so engaged. It was ten times more fun for them to build the towers on this giant map, which means they are going to remember what they learned far better than something on a worksheet.”