Project
Documents:
Historic Map Worksheet

"The map that I liked best was this really old map. It was part of the first map of Philadelphia."
-4th grader, Greenfield Elementary School

Historic Maps at the Rosenbach
To help pull the class story together, each group took another trip to the Rosenbach Museum and Library to see and learn about the many versions of history that we can "read about" in historic maps. The maps were chosen to demonstrate the many different things and different ways that maps can communicate. This diverse collection of maps made it clear that students could invent thier own maps in creative ways. Discussions focused on symbols, drawings, engravings, legends and keys--the details that make up a map, and how we read and compare them. These terms were needed and used as students read maps from different times and from all over the world. Students also saw maps that were specific to their communities. Classes from Germantown saw the original document that showed how lots were sold in the 1700's right in their neighborhood. This old piece of paper had a lot of resonance for kids that had walked those same streets many times and had been given the opportunity to stop and look and draw and think. Surrounded by these maps from history, the classes became ready for the final task, the creation of their own published class map of the neighborhood.

Final Neighborhood Map; Assesment and Evaluations:
Pulling out the portfolios, sorting through the accumulated work, and talking about the final group project was tremendously exciting because of the effort and progress evident in each student's collection. They could clearly see it and the teachers could see it. Classes discussed the technical nature of the group map -- that it would be professionally published and that certain kinds of pictures would be more "readable" than others. Students were often asked to revise or add to work with the publication format in mind. All of this reinforced the great detail and many choices that go into making a map. The big questions were: what's important about this place to us -- and how do we want to show it?

After the work had been given its first sorting, teachers began the review that would lead to a final neighborhood map. Going back to the "What Is My School Address" handout from the first day, students could see how much they had learned about their school's surroundings. Again, there was a review of the patterns of the city streets and directional orientation. They looked at the globe, they looked at the classroom maps of the United States and Pennsylvania, gradually narrowing the focus to the school's neighborhood. Unlike the first discussion of this type, students now were full of ideas, facts, and history of the community. Led by a teacher, the classes created a group neighborhood map on the chalkboard. What should be included? Why? Which of the students' work would best highlight these important elements? How could a legend help us to include more? This formed a blueprint of what would become the final printed product. With the understanding that the project's graphic designer would have a lot to say in the map's composition, students packed up their journals and pictures to be delivered to the designer and anxiously awaited the delivery of their published neighborhood maps. "Why would it take so many weeks?" they wondered aloud, and this led to a discussion of the whole process of design and printing -- another important aspect of map making. Then finally, it came.

Each class filled out an assessment in one of the final meetings. This was to measure their achievement according to the standardized curriculum -- skills of map reading and writing. Inevitably students viewed this as a test, so nerves ran high. Nonetheless, these evaluations showed that most students had successfully learned basic skills of map reading and mapmaking in ways appropriate to a fourth grader in public schools. They understood the system of Philadelphia's street patterns. They understood the notions of map key and directions and where the school was located in relation to the rivers around Philadelphia. Altogether, they showed that they could both receive and convey detailed information using the highly abstracted expressions of a map.

But beyond the skills of mapping, it was very clear (but more difficult to measure) that these students had learned a great deal about their community -- the stories that are told by buildings, streets, bricks, manhole covers, tomb stones, stores and trees. This understanding of their own place and its relation to history was a central goal of the program, and it was evinced powerfully in the spirit of their visual and written work and their jubilant enthusiasm for the final published map - each student received about ten maps to distribute to their friends and family. After weeks of walking, talking, drawing, photographing, and above all, looking - the kids were thrilled to be a part of making something together and celebrating all that their community has to offer.