Exploring the Red River: Using Maps
Maps are excellent primary sources for classroom research about local history and natural history.
This kit includes three maps: a topographical map of the area encompassing the Red River Basin; a highway map of Miller County; and a highway map of Lafayette County.
These maps can be the starting point for a variety of classroom activities. Here are some possibilities:
Map the Neighborhood
This activity is appropriate for kindergarteners and older students. Have students create maps of their own neighborhoods, referring to local maps or the county highway maps to get started. Students can add details such as sites of historical events.
Display the students' individual neighborhood maps together, perhaps linking them with strips of colored paper to represent roads.
Map Your Family's History
This activity is appropriate for fourth-graders and older students. Using a map of the Red River and surrounding area, the students can mark locations where family members have lived, noting the years that they lived in each place. They can trace their families' migration routes in various ways.
Students may want to embellish these family history maps with photographs of family members, old homes, or other images. Keys to symbols and a short narrative explaining the information on the map will be useful. Display the family history maps.
Map Your Community
This activity is appropriate for fourth-graders and older students. Enlarge a section of the county highway map that encompasses your community and a portion of the Red River Basin. Make copies for all students. Have them ask parents, grandparents, and other older residents to help them mark their maps with the locations
of past buildings or roads. These maps could be useful tools during oral history interviews.
Enlarge the community map even more by copying it on butcher paper. Compile all students' findings about the community on one map and post it on a bulletin board or wall.
Have students write an explanation of the information on the map to use as a text panel in the display.
Map the Red River Basin
This activity is appropriate for fourth-graders and older students. Use the topographical map of the Red River Basin that lies along the border of Miller and Lafayette Counties. Copy the map in as large a format as practical on butcher paper. Omit some of the topographical detail on the larger map but post the smaller map on the same bulletin board or wall for reference. Include roads and major landmarks so that persons examining the map can orient themselves.
Have students mark locations of historical events on the map. For example, did the Great Red River Raft extend to this section of the river? Did any students' ancestors live in the river basin? Have any communities vanished from the river basin? Where were ferries located?
If your class takes any field trips to the river basin, you may have sketches or photographs to use for inset illustrations. Students can examine maps in publications such as National Geographic to find ideas for combining illustrations with maps.
Display the large topographical map with the additions that you and the students have made. Write an explanation for the map that invites viewers to add their own information. When displaying the map, you may want to assign a student to actually draw and write on the map as visitors provide new information. Keep a record of the visitors who provide new information, as this information will be another primary source in the classroom research.
Resources
Contact nearby libraries and municipal, county, and state governments for other maps.
© Red River Rural Schools Partnership 1998
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