perspective

This year I'm embarking on a new course--7th Grade Social Studies!  My main focus will be teaching world geography, so today we did a map activity.  I started out by having students draw a map of the world from their own memory.  After they had a little time to work I had them compare their maps to other students in the class.  We talked about how each of their maps were different and why there were differences.  We then compared their maps to these three maps below. 

Most related to this map: 

The students felt like this map was "backwards." 

And this one was "upside down." 

After coming up with descriptors for these different maps and their own  maps we discussed how each of these maps are right in their own way.  They aren't "backwards" or "weird" or "upside down." Rather they are just a different perspective than we are use to.   In the end I hope we all learned that: 

1. There is more than one way to see the world. 

2. Other perspectives can also be right.

3. We should try to see things (in this case, the world) from a new perspective so we can grow in our understanding.  

Overall the activity went really well.  For the most part students tracked with it and I even had a student come up to me after class and said, "I've never seen other maps like that before and thought about that stuff. That was really cool."  It made my day.