Photo by David Vives on Unsplash
Target Student Group: 4th grade, social studies & math
Instructions for students: Take time to explore this interactive map, which shows the 21 California Missions. Each location on the map shows one of the missions and includes a short description, photos, and even videos. While exploring the missions, pick your favorite one because we will be making dioramas of them in the next few weeks. But for now, start exploring the map.
Also, pick 5 pairs of Missions that are adjacent to one another. For example, Mission San Juan Capistrano is adjacent to Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. Using the map, see how many miles apart they are. These two missions are 27 miles apart. Then, we will do some math with this. If it took you 22 minutes to walk one mile, how many hours would it take to walk between these two missions? Multiplying 22 minutes/mile by 27 miles gets you 594 minutes or 9.9 hours (which you get by dividing 594 minutes by 60, which is the number of minutes in an hour). Now, repeat this process but pick different pairs of missions that are adjacent to one another and find out how long it would take to walk between them based on how far apart they are and based on a 22 minutes/mile walking pace.
Goal for the lesson & how MyMap helps meet that goal: The goal of this lesson to teach students about the California missions, which is a key element of the social studies curriculum for California 4th graders. This lesson also gives students multiplication and division practice which is very important in 4th grade. This map helps meet these goals by engaging students in the content, giving them resources to learn about the missions, and having them practice math skills with an element of choice (since they get to pick which adjacent missions to solve with).
Hailey, I really enjoyed your lesson. I think the way you incorporated math into your map is really creative. It is a great way for students to practice their multiplication and division. Great job!!!
Hailey, I thought this was such a cool lesson to teach, especially from your own experience! It would be so cool to add a new twist to a long-standing lesson. I also loved your spin on including math in the overall lesson. Overall, really enjoyed it and would love to learn this if I was your student!
Hailey,
A great idea for using MyMaps. You do a great job of providing background and instructions for the reader / students. Very clever to take a history/ geography lesson and use it to support math word problems. Well done!