Students seek certain locations on the map Thursday afternoon. (Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Hands on learning

Giant map helping high school students learn history

Mar 12, 2020 | 5:21 PM

Students at Carlton Comprehensive High School are using a different learning tool.

The school has temporarily acquired a large floor map of Canada. Along with the map there are also large timelines which showcase major events in Indigenous history.

Social studies teacher Bonnie Vandale explained the tool provides students the chance to learn while seeing.

“I think it gives them a visual of what Canada looks like and to find all of the areas that are on the map to see the languages and to see the land and the patterns,” she said.

To start out their work, Vandale handed out plastic cones to students and assigned them to find a residential school in a certain part of the country. Another exercise saw students working to locate a major city, while one also saw them working to find reserve lands.

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Vandale said the map, created by Canadian Geographic, also provides educators with a number of different exercises, which touch on a range of topics.

“You can do demographics, you can do governments, you can do human rights,” she said.

She first saw the map at the Teachers Institute on Parliamentary Democracy and then applied to get it last year. She has already booked to have the map return again next year and is hoping to be able to have it on hand for both semesters.

Vandale added she felt the display was also important for Indigenous students of hers to get a chance to learn their history.

“I wanted them to be showcased today,” she said.

(Michael Joel-Hansen/paNOW Staff)

Malachi Lange, a grade 11 student originally from South Africa said the size of the of map caught him a bit off guard.

“I wasn’t expecting [it] to be this big,” he said.

Lange said the learning tool is the first time he has been exposed to Canada’s past and he personally enjoys learning about history in general.

“It’s very fun, it’s also very educational,” he said.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn