Our Evolving Map

As I wrote yesterday, we have traveled to the four ends of Manhattan - North, South, East, and West.  As we visited each place, we drew landmarks and important parts of the city, wrote about what we saw, and made great observations.  After each trip, we added to our map of Manhattan.  We started with only a few things:

- A green piece of paper that represented the land
- A blue piece of paper that represented the water
- A marker
- Some tape
- Some small cubes to make both bridges and EVCS
- Our observation papers/booklets

We also knew some facts about the geography of New York City and maps in general.  We first drew a compass rose (something we learned about with Leah) to get ourselves oriented. Then we talked about what we knew. We knew that it was split into 5 boroughs, although we weren't sure we knew what that meant. We knew that New Jersey was nearby. We knew that Manhattan was an island and that an island is land completely surrounded by water.  And we had heard of many other islands in the area.

We had many long classroom discussion about this. Where should our school be in relation to the water? To the bridges? To the island itself? What could we tell about where we were based on the length of each bus ride to get to different spots.

We revisited our map after each trip. Here is its progression:

First, we just had the East River and a bridge that we saw north of us.
We also used a yellow cube to mark where we thought EVCS was.

Next, we began creating the harbor. We saw at least 4 islands at the harbor.
We also drove past 3 bridges that we knew: the Williamsburg Bridge, the
Manhattan Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge. We also knew that New Jersey
was across from us when standing in Battery Park and that the
Brooklyn Bridge connected to Brooklyn.  Our school also moved further
south on our map.

Then we added the Hudson River. Since we could look south down
the river and see the Statue of Liberty, we figured out that the Hudson
River is connected to the harbor.

Today we discussed our final trip. We saw two rivers connect
and knew from our bus ride that the one river was still the Hudson River.
We also saw a bridge where those two rivers met. Some of us knew that
the new river was called the Harlem River and that the Bronx was
across from us.

Of course, this map does not look exactly like Manhattan - but it has much of the important details there. We also know that we are missing many important islands. One student is working to figure out the name of the first bridge we saw so that we can determine if Roosevelt Island is north of it or south of it.  Once we think our map is finalized, we'll create a large-scale map that we can start placing important landmarks and roads on.  Stay tuned!