Lesson 5: Grid Explorer Capstone — Be the Map Maker!
Creating your own zoo map using all the skills from this unit — grid references, compass rose, scale bar, and legend — and sharing it with a real audience.
🎯 Ngā Whāinga Akoranga | Learning Intentions
All elements of a complete map (grid, compass rose, scale bar, legend/key, enclosure labels); how professional map makers use mathematics to create accurate representations of space.
Create a complete zoo map for a new 'Aotearoa Wetlands' section, including all map elements, with correctly calculated positions and distances.
🧠 Mathematical Scaffold: How Maps Are Made
How Maps Are Made — Cartography for Kids
This lesson runs as a discussion and build task — no video is required. If your class has one you like on cartography for kids (5-10 min), it fits well as an optional opener before the discussion below.
🧠 1. Get Ready
You've read maps. Now you're going to MAKE one. What are all the ingredients a good map needs? Think about everything we've used in this unit. List them before we start.
👁️ 2. Key Ideas to Cover
- A scale bar translates map distances to real distances. If your map is 20cm wide and represents 100m of real space, what is your scale?
- Every map needs a legend (key). What symbols will you use for: wetland, viewing platform, wheelchair path, café, bird hide?
- Your map should be accurate enough for a visitor to actually use it to navigate. How will you check this?
🗣️ 3. Kaiako Move
Kaiako Move: Show maps from various scales and contexts — road maps, building plans, treasure maps, star charts. Ask: what makes each one easy or hard to use? What principles from our unit appear in all of them?
Task: Map Maker Project: Create a complete map of a new 20-enclosure 'Aotearoa Wetlands' section at Hamilton Zoo. Must include: alphanumeric grid, compass rose, scale bar, legend, and 8 species habitats correctly scaled.
⚡ Whakaoho | Do Now (5 mins)
List the five essential elements of any good map in 60 seconds. Now compare with a partner — did you get the same five?
📐 Activity 1: Guided Mathematical Exploration (25 mins)
Map-making workshop: using graph paper, rulers, and coloured pencils, students create their Aotearoa Wetlands section map. Kaiako circulates, checking scale accuracy and grid labelling.
✍️ Activity 2: Application & Reflection (20 mins)
Map sharing: display maps around the room. Peers use each other's maps to solve three navigation tasks. Feedback: which map was most accurate? Which was clearest? Celebrate both!
🏫 Kaiako Planning & Pedagogy Notes
Curriculum Alignment: Te Mātaiaho Mathematics Phase 2/3 — Integrated project: create an accurate map using geometry, measurement, and spatial reasoning.
Hamilton Zoo Context: Tasks are set at Hamilton Zoo as a familiar shared context. The grid, the distances and the routes in these lessons are teaching constructions, not surveyed zoo data — there is no zoo map supplied with this unit. If you want ākonga working from the real layout, bring the zoo's own visitor map to the lesson and say plainly that you are swapping the constructed grid for a real one.
Cultural Connection: Connect coordinate navigation to traditional Polynesian wayfinding — stars as coordinate systems, waka routes as vectors, mauri/kaitiakitanga of animal species at the zoo.