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Teach It Yourself

Resources, programs, and activities for teaching with maps

Teaching and Learning Resources

We’ll be adding more as we get them updated, so check back.

What Is A Map?

What Is A Map?

Grades 1–3
Students practice how to interpret maps by reading the stories being told by mapmakers. Students create a map of their own, receive a short interactive lesson about maps and mapping, and work in small groups to answer questions about some of the maps in our collection.
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World Maps Over Time

World Maps Over Time

Grades 6-8
Students practice being critical map readers using a range of world maps, from the oldest in our collection to the present. After an interactive lesson on map projections, students work in small groups to analyze what mapmakers include on their maps and why.
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Native People and Settler Colonialism: A Story of Land and Maps

Native People and Settler Colonialism: A Story of Land and Maps

Grades 4-12
Students explore maps made by Indigenous People and Euro-Americans to interrogate differing conceptions of land and how maps can document and be used as tools of land dispossession, cultural genocide, and resistance. In Lesson One, students look closely at a 19th century map made by a Bájoxe (Ioway) leader and contrast it with Euro-American maps of the same period. In Lesson Two, students work in small groups to analyze how Euro-Americans represented Indigenous People on 19th century maps and finish by looking at how Native People have used mapping to write new narratives.
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Tools for Teachers

Directly access map sets and lesson plans using our digital collections, or search the database below for map sets, lesson plans and other teaching resources on everything from teaching the American Revolution to redlining and housing discrimination.

Comprehensive Teaching Resources List

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  • Keep checking back as we add to this list, or reach out if you don’t see what you’re looking for.

Teaching with our Current Exhibition

Explore education activities related to Bending Lines: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception