Bird's-eye view: from a model of the classroom to a pictorial map

The idea

A map shows places as they look from directly above, so objects keep their positions relative to each other when a room is drawn as a plan.

Safety card

What you need

• 1 A3 sheet of card as the classroom floor, with the door and windows drawn on the edges by the teacher
• Small boxes and blocks (matchboxes, tissue boxes, building blocks) for tables, the teacher's desk, shelves and the mat
• 1 tablet or phone camera, held flat above the model by the adult, who leans over it rather than climbing; a lens of 26 mm in 35 mm-equivalent terms sees 69.4 degrees across a 3:2 frame but only 67.3 degrees across the long side of the 4:3 frame that phone and tablet cameras use, and 67.3 degrees covers 39.9 cm at 30 cm, which is short of the 42 cm side of the A3 card; on a 4:3 frame the card needs about 32 cm above it (about 30 cm on a 3:2 frame). Check on the screen that the whole card fits before the photo is taken and raise the camera until it does.
• Crayons and one A4 sheet per child; 6 picture cards of places in the room (door, sink, mat, reading corner, window, teacher's desk)
• 1 soft toy to hide for the map-reading test

How to do it

1. Walk the room together and name the places children use: the door, the mat, the reading corner, the sink.
2. In groups, place a box on the card for each table and piece of furniture in the same position as in the room; check against the real room by pointing from the model to the furniture.
3. The adult, leaning over the model where it sits on the floor or a low table, photographs it from directly above and from the side. Children compare the two photos: which one shows where things are, which one shows how tall they are.
4. Each child draws the room from above on A4, as the top photo shows it, and draws the door and the mat first.
5. The adult hides the soft toy and marks its place with a cross on one child's map; the class uses the map to find the toy. Repeat three times with different children's maps.
6. Count how many of the three hunts found the toy using the map alone.

What you should see

Each group's model has the furniture in the same arrangement as the room (the door, mat and tables in the right order around the edges), and the overhead photo looks like a map while the side photo does not. The class counts how many of the three hunts found the toy from the map alone; when a hunt fails, the map is compared with the room to find which object was drawn in the wrong place. It worked if children can point from any object on their map to the real object in the room.

What changes

This activity lists no variables to change, measure and keep the same.

Common misconceptions

Each of these ideas is wrong, and the activity is a chance to test it.

• A map is a picture of what a place looks like from the side.
• The things on a map can be drawn anywhere as long as they are all there.

Curriculum references

The NSW syllabus outcomes and Australian Curriculum v9 codes this activity supports. They are references, not a verified or complete curriculum alignment.

• Geography K–10 Syllabus (2015), NESA; current and taught in 2026, replaced from 2027. The outcome codes are not printed on the NESA landing page for this syllabus, which only links the document, so the url given is the syllabus document itself (geography-k-10-syllabus-2015.docx); the code and its outcome text were read in that document on 23 September 2026.GEe-1GEe-2
• Human Society and its Environment K–6 Syllabus (2024), NESA; implementation from 2027, not yet taught; code read on this page on 22 September 2026HSE-GEO-01
• Australian Curriculum v9AC9HSFK03AC9HSFS02AC9HSFS05

Sources

The pages the author read to write this activity.

1. education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/hsie/hsie-curriculum-resources-k-12/hsie-k-6-curriculum-resources/hsie-es1-units
2. www.ga.gov.au/education/classroom-resources/map-reading-guide
3. curriculum.nsw.edu.au/learning-areas/hsie/hsie-k-6-2024/outcomes
4. www.nsw.gov.au/education-and-training/nesa/curriculum/hsie/geography-k-10-2015