2nd Grade American Indian Maps
Second graders at Laburnum Elementary have been studying the American Indians (SOL2.2) and map skills (SOL2.4), so today students in Ms. Satterfield’s class created American Indian maps. I posted a link to My Google Maps on Google classroom and pointed out that students can always get back to any maps they create by using that link. On the website, we clicked the red “Create new map” button and titled it “Indian Map.” I explained that they would watch me make a marker first, then we would make one together, and finally, they would create some by themselves. First I made a sample marker on Laburnum Elementary to show them how to add a marker, change the color and style of the marker, and add text and images. Next each student clicked the marker button on their own map and placed a marker where the Powhatan Indians lived in Virginia. We titled it “Eastern Woodlands” and wrote a complete sentence about the Powhatan Indians. After pressing the blue “Save” button, we clicked the camera button to add a photo. Since typing the name of the tribe didn’t usually provide good results, I suggested that they could search for the environment (woodlands), homes (long houses), animals (deer), modes of transportation (canoe), etc. Then I showed them how to customize the marker icon using the paint bucket button. Now it was up to them to create markers showing where the Lakota and Pueblo Indians lived. I wrote a word bank on the board for them to use (Great Plains, Southwest Desert, buffalo, bison, teepees, tipis, adobe, multi-story terraced buildings, etc). When the students were finished with their maps, we clicked the “Share” button and changed the privacy to “Anyone with the link.” We copied the link to our map and posted it on Google classroom for our classmates to see. You can see them here.