ROAM: Memory Mapping Lesson Number 2, Art 1, 2nd - 4th grade, 1-2 class periods
Elementary students are learning about their environment, community and local architecture and their own place within it. Students reflect on their relationship to place and their own mobility within their local environments. Engaging students with walking and mapping, students become aware of the process of embodied learning that they engage in when they navigate space. Students will discuss and reflect on how we develop a sense of place through memory and navigation. Key Concepts: We navigate space and create mental maps. We create meaning in places as we inhabit them. We remember places and create imaginary worlds in our dreams and fantasies. Mapping a place or a journey, we create meaning and importance. Mapping can be a creative record of an experience.
Essential Question:
How do we navigate our world?
How do we construct a sense of place?
What can we learn from places?
How do we map place? How do we map experience?
How do we construct meaning and narrate experiences within place?
Where do we feel at home?
Where do we have access to and where can we not go?
Lesson Objectives: The student will be able to observe the ways that we construct a sense of place as we engage in orientation when navigating our environments. The student will be able to create a memory map of their journey home from school to expand their notion of cartography by collecting artifacts and drawing their trip from memory. The instructor will assess the map by following the provided rubric (below).
Specific Art Content: Students will reflect on observation, using different sense perceptions to notice the world around them. Students will observe their local environment, looking for symbols in architecture, patterns in nature and meaning in social space.
Artists/artwork: Kevin Lynch, Janet Cardiff, Lindsey Dunnigan
Resources & Materials: Power Point presentation Computer or Tablet Notepad or small books Walking shoes Pencil
Instruction & Sequencing: Students reflect on walking and mapping and the ways they are reflecting and responding to their local environment.
Introduction/Motivation: Ask students to discuss their journey home. What kinds of things they notice? Did it take them longer to get home because they were busy observing their journey and environment? What kinds of objects did they collect and why? Students share some of their objects and the reasons they were attracted to them.
Guided Practice Instructor will guide students in discussion about the object they collected. Instructor will demonstrate creating a map from memory of a trip to the cafeteria.
Independent Practice Students will draw a map of their trip between school and their house. Using the object that they collected, how can we map the relationship between the object, the place and the student?
Closure Students will discuss mapping as a visual form. How can students expand the format of the map? What kinds of spaces would be good for what kinds of movement? What kinds of things will we notice in different environments?
Formative Evaluation Instructor will ask questions to initiate discussion to assess students understanding of the ideas presented. Students will share their maps and brainstorm ways to extend notions of mapping.
Classroom Management Procedures Students can be paired into groups to discuss their maps. One partner can read the map as a narrative.
Summative Assessment and Evaluation: Summative assessment is based on the rubric Journey Home Map and reflection during guided discussion.