Description
What our Latitude and Longitude lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Latitude and Longitude teaches students how to define these terms and distinguish between the two. Students will discover how to use coordinates to find different places on a map. They will also learn why GPS must depend on latitude and longitude to work properly. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade and 4th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. For this lesson, you need world maps that have latitude and longitude lines and colored pencils.
Options for Lesson
You can check out the “Options for Lesson” section of the classroom procedure page for additional suggestions for ideas and activities to incorporate into the lesson. One idea is to assign students to do research on GPS and how it works. As another option, give students themed lists to use to find coordinates, such as coordinates of all state capitals, country capitals, 10 places they would like to visit, and so on. You could also provide blank world maps on which students can insert the latitude and longitude lines, beginning with the equator and the prime meridian. One more option is for students to plan a vacation around the world, showing their stops using only each location’s latitude and longitude.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page provides an extra paragraph of information to help guide the lesson and remind you what to focus on. It suggests teaching this lesson in conjunction with others related to geography. The blank lines on this page are available for you to write out thoughts and ideas you have as you prepare the lesson.
LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Latitude and Longitude lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. These worksheets will help students demonstrate what they learned throughout the lesson and reinforce the lesson concepts. The guide on the classroom procedure page outlines when to hand out each worksheet to your students.
COORDINATES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will look at a map with a grid overlay. They will first determine what the latitude and longitude values are for the five red dots on the map. Then they will look at five different coordinates and mark them on the map. If you want, you could have students guess where those places might be. For instance, the dot for A would be a state somewhere in middle U.S. states.
TRUE OR FALSE PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet divides into two sections. For the first section, students will decide whether each of 10 statements is true (T) or false (F). Then they will correctly label a map using the terms in the word bank.
LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Similar to the practice worksheet, the homework assignment has two sections. The first section requires students to give the approximate latitude and longitude coordinates for 10 dots on a map of the United States. For the second part, they will fill in the blanks of eight sentences. There is no word bank from which they can pick the correct terms.
Worksheet Answer Keys
There are answer keys for all three worksheets at the end of the lesson plan document. Correct answers are in red to make it easier for you to compare them to students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
