Using Maps for Writing

1. Using Maps for Writing Tapping into the Power of an Ancient Tool

2. My experience • Eau Claire Leader Telegram • Beloit Daily News • Carnegie (PA) Signal-Item • Maryland Gazette (Suburban Baltimore) • Madison Business First • Wisconsin State Journal • Freelancing: Isthmus, Wisconsin Trails, Madison Magazine, In Business, Wisconsin People and Ideas

3. Revolving door

5. Maps are fascinating.

6. Ken Jennings, Maphead (12) “There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing out world and our relations to it that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.”

7. “Most often, what we ask of a map is to help us get from here to there.” Turchi, (82)

8. My question: • How can I use the visual tools of mapping to help students write better?

9. Is this a map?

10. Or this?

11. Imago Mundi: 600 BC

12. Ptolemy of Alexandria

13. Mappa MundiHereford’s Mappa Mundic. 1290

14. Mappa Mundi Detail

15. Portolano

16. John Mercator: 1569

17. John Ogilby: 1675

18. John Snow: Cholera 1854

19. Rand McNally: 1922

20. Brain-mapping: Not a coincidence “The distinctive feature of brains such as the one we own is their uncanny ability to create maps.” -Antonio Damasio

21. Maryanne Wolf: Proust and the Squid

23. Katie Wood Ray • Reading like a writer with pictures books. • Give students choice in topics. • Creating experiences to write about • Continue reading aloud

24. Katy Wood Ray She asks “.. do you – their teacher – think of them as writers as they are gathered around you What expectations do you have for them as writers?” (75)

25. What are the stages or steps of writing a history essay? • Brainstorm on your own • Discuss as a table.

26. My process

27. Turchi says: Writing can be broken in to two separate acts: • Exploration • Presentation Purpose: To lead reader on a journey. (13)

28. My writing map

29. Back to clustering

30. Is anyone using maps for writing? The Thompson Writing Program at Duke University suggests that writers use maps in these ways: • Geographic context • Help with sequencing • Visual representation • Analysis of history/anthropology of a setting

31. Maps have conventions

32. Using maps literally: The United States Before the Civil War

33. Sequencing

34. Maps as Inspiration

35. Where is this?

36. Here be dragons

37. Map as metaphor

38. Maps and critical literacy • Who made this map? • What was the political/historical/social context? • What was the purpose of this map? • What is at the center of the map? • What is and isn’t included?

39. What is at the center?

40. Who’s on top?

41. What does this map represent?

42. Distortion: Mercator

43. Gall-Peters Projection

44. How could map distortion be used in • Fiction writing • Persuasive writing • Historical writing • Science writing?

45. Maphead Activity

46. Going Forward: • I will use maps more consistently in history because I know my students need more exposure to learn geography. • I will use maps to help them write about history. • I will have student make their own writing maps. • I will have give students cluster before using or making a more traditional graphic organizer.