Visual literacy: what are maps for?

This map from Going to Grandma's, a simple introduction to street maps, includes a grid and compass rose. Illustration by Chantal Stewart.

What are maps for?

Maps are not just for "doing geography." We use maps almost every day in our adult lives, to get about town, to plan a vacation, to invite friends to a special event, to find a room in a new school, ... the uses are too many to list. In fact, map reading and map writing form a basic lifelong literacy skill.

Maps and map symbols are part of everyday life

Just getting about the city requires a knowledge of all those international symbols such as

These symbols are also found on street maps. More than any other visual text, maps form a direct link between the children's world and literacy. Learning map symbols such as these helps children to understand the community around them and to build confidence in participating in it.

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Maps help us to plan our lives

We use maps often in everyday life. Whether it's locating a room in a museum or an animal in a zoo, visiting relatives, or finding the local sports center - we use maps for finding our way, giving directions, and meeting friends.

An example of this use of maps can be demonstrated to children with a book like You Are Here, a kind of puzzle-game which takes us through a zoo:

A more detailed guide to this book can be found here. Illustration by Chantal Stewart.

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Maps tell us about remote times and places

Imagining distant times and places, or remote environments and communities, is easier with maps.

Topographic maps show landforms, forests, oceans, and cities.
Maps with journey lines explain historical change such as exploration and settlement.
A sequence of maps, that show the same place changing over time, can develop an understanding of how cities or empires have evolved, how continents have moved, or how the local neighborhood has grown.

You can introduce the conventions of a topographic map to very young children using a book such as The World, in which each map element is introduced separately, and all parts are then brought together at the end of the book:

First two pages:

Last page:

Maps by Mike Gorman

Distant places that the child may not be able to visit can be strongly imagined in books that show communities and people in their local environments. An example is the book Nine to Five, which shows people at work in a small French town over the period of one working day:

Nine to eleven a.m.:

Move your cursor over this 9 o'clock image to see what has changed at 11 o'clock.

One to five p.m.:

Move your cursor over this 1 o'clock image to see what has changed at 5 o'clock.

These extracts are only one-tenth of each full page. Illustrations by Chantal Stewart.

Each page shows us a different hour of the day. Some two dozen separate stories can be followed by looking at the progress of different "characters" in the pictures. These "bird's eye views" are another way of introducing map perspective, and form a sequence, showing change over time.

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Maps put kids in context

Local maps help young children to understand how they fit into the world around them. Street maps, neighborhood maps, even classroom maps and home maps (or plans) help children with concepts of community, shelter, and mutual responsibility.

You can introduce young children (age 5+) to map literacy by asking them to draw a map of the classroom. Show the children an example of a real building plan. Otherwise use a book such as Cressida's Classroom as an example:

Roll your mouse over this classroom picture to see a map of the classroom:

Extract from Cressida's Classroom. Illustration by Robert Roennfeldt. This book compares a "bird's eye view" of a classroom with its map. A key (or legend) uses color coding to identify details in the map:

Children can make their own classroom maps, or they can map their way from home to school, or draw a plan of their favorite room at home. In each case the map is a personal and social text which helps the children to find themselves within their family, school or community.

Those children who have difficulty expressing themselves in words and sentences often produce richly informative maps of this kind.

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Maps can be mind puzzles

Maze maps are a good introduction to map concepts for young children. They also stimulate mathematical, spatial, and logical thinking, especially when a maze map is put in the context of a science or social studies topic.

In the following example, children are invited to investigate and review concepts of animal homes, shelter, protection, and food, when tracing possible ways through the maze:

Extract from Find the Way Home. Other animals in this book include a beaver (and dam), spider (and web), bee (and hive), and caterpillar (and leaf). A visual answer page ends the book. Illustration by Tracie Grimwood.

By playing this maze-solving game, children also compare kinds of animal shelter, connecting animals to the homes they make.

Other issues that can be discussed with this book include differences between natural, animal-made, and human-made homes; wild and domestic animals; how animas make their nests; and animal life cycles.

Map-like language (up, down right, left, which leads on to north, south, east, west) supports mathematical concepts of directionality and spatial relationships.

Summary: What are maps for?

Map reading and map writing are lifelong literacy skills.
Many map symbols are the same as environmental signs. Learning the meanings of environmental symbols and icons is a first step in confident citizenship and community participation. To read these signs is also a part of safety awareness.
Many young children, or older students who are struggling with English, can communicate visually (using maps and symbols) before they can express the same information in words and sentences.
A map is a more economical, practical, clearer and more memorable way of giving directions and expressing spatial relationships than writing the same information using only words and sentences.
Maps are not just for "doing geography". We use maps in all study areas, in our daily lives, in finding our way about town, in planning and in decision making. We can even draw Body Maps.

All the books mentioned on this page are part of the series InfoActive, a visual literacy series of books for K-3.

To ask a consultant to show you any of these books

in USA click here (Pearson Learning)

in Canada click here (Scholastic Canada)

in Australia click here (Pearson Education Australia)

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