Cascade Resource CentreChennai

&The Indian Institute of Geographical

StudiesBangalore

‘Roadside geography’Mapping a Chennai Street

Saturday, 29 December 2012

What we did indoors (1)

• We studied a small extract from a topographic map in a school atlas.

• We learned how features are shown using– Points – Lines – Areas

What we did outdoors

• We oriented ourselves and the page on which the map is to be drawn using a magnetic compass.

• We started from one end of our street and started plotting buildings, trees (points), roads (lines), and empty plots (areas).

What we did indoors (2)

• We filled in the legend box on the map sheet showing the symbols and their meanings

• Earlier in the morning, we had watched a documentary (‘The Paradox of the Andes’)

• So, at the end, each kid chose one concept or idea that s/he had learned from the documentary. A word related to it was painted on the kid.

• We all had a lot of fun … and learned so much that textbooks don’t teach us!

Field help + photo credits (parents):

• Ms Malathi Mahadevan

• Ms Sandhiya Venkatesan

• Ms Rajeswari Bakkiyaraj

Organizer: Ms Vidya Shankar, Montessorian educator, Founder +

Chairperson, Relief Foundation, parent organization of

Cascade Resource Centre, Chennai

Presenter: Dr Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, Geographer.

Founder/Director, The Indian Institute of Geographical

Studies, Bangalore

This was the first of many forthcoming collaborative

workshops between Cascade and TIIGS to be held in

Chennai and other places.

To organize such interactions in your neighborhood,

contact:

relieffoundationindia@gmail.com

or

geo@tiigs.org