This document discusses using mapping activities in K-12 classrooms to help students understand their communities. It provides examples of how mapping can help students define concepts like home, family, safety, and resources. The document also discusses how artists have used mapping and how students mapped their own school communities. Finally, it describes how students at one school worked with architects to map problems in their learning environment and propose solutions to make the school more conducive to learning.

1. Community Mapping These children had never seen each others’ neighborhoods, certainly not each others’ homes or families. They were essentially strangers to each other” (Ewald, 2001)

2. How do children see their own communities?

5. What family means to them

6. What is safe and unsafe

8. What possibilities there are to make changes in their communities

11. Scopic Regimes &AnalogySimon Evans Travelers Map of Heaven

13. Lars Arrhenius A-Z

14. Joaquin Torres Garcia

15. Student maps of their communities

16. Students mapping their communities

17. Can you Hear Me Now? 3rd and 4th Grade Investigations into their Own Learning Environments

18. Creating a Positive Learning Environment As part of SIP, we wanted to create a learning environment that was more conducive to student learning and inviting to students and their families. As a teacher, I wondered “How can we engage our students in this conversation?

19. Architectural Collaboration Architects are artists that create environments. We were able to utilize a partnership with a local architecture firm, RNL, to bring architects into our classroom through CAL to investigate the physical culture of the school.

20. Students were experts in the school environment: Students also brought their knowledge to the classroom, hosting tours for the architects as well as their own peers from different homerooms.

21. Together, we applied these to our own school: We went on a school walk, just as our principal does with her supervisor, and followed the same process we just did with the images. As we walked through the hall, we jotted places that we saw a problem and sketched ideas of how to make it better

22. Next, we learned more about the architectural process. There is a client: Our Principal The client has a need: Make our school more inviting, illustrate the learning that takes place There is a proposal: Our sketches, Acoustic Panels in the Cafeteria There is a revision: Time and Money Constraints There is a plan: Selection of the Panels There is outsourcing: Panel company silkscreened designs

23. School walk sketches

24. Smaller connections…