Topic: How to present relative and absolute altitudes, as well as the relief, on maps

Author: Magdalena Jankun

Target group

5th‑grade students of elementary school

Core curriculum

I. Map of Poland: general geographical map, landscape map, tourist map (printed and digital), map scale, map signs, map content.

The student:

1) Applies the map legend to read information and the map scale to calculate the distance between selected objects.

3) reads the content of the map of Poland.

The general aim of education

The students learn the methods of presenting the Earth's relief on maps.

Criteria of success

• You will explain what the contour lines on the maps are for;

• indicate the difference between the relative and absolute altitudes;

• discuss the hypsometric method.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• IT competences.

Methods / forms of work

• Use of ICT tools

• Work with educational materials and multimedia on epodreczniki.pl platform

• Talk, discussion

• Individual work, in pairs and the whole class team.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook for teaching geography;

• interactive whiteboard;

• physical map of the World;

• geographical atlases;

• projector;

• tablets / computers.

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher presents the topic, lesson goal and criteria of success.

2. The teacher displays a topographic map on the interactive whiteboard. The teacher asks the selected student to characterize this type of map and encourages to read the information on it.

3. The teacher draws attention to the lines visible on the map. Then, the teacher explains that they combine points of the same altitude - above or below sea level - and that they are called contour lines or isohypses.

Realization

1. The teacher displays a contour line map of a hill. The teacher asks the students to indicate gentle and steep places. The teacher emphasizes that the closer the contour lines are drawn to each other, the more steep the slope, the further away from each other 2. the gentler. The students determine the distance between the contour lines.

2. The students do exercise 1 from the abstract.

3. The students make a contour line drawing in their notebooks, taking into account the contour lines placed every 20 m and the assumption that the altitude of the highest point is 620 m above sea level, and the foot of the mountain is located at an altitude of 380 m above sea level.

4. The teacher presents an illustration of relative and absolute altitudes, the students define both terms.

5. The teacher displays a contour line map of a hill one more time. The students read the absolute altitude of points A and B and calculate the relative altitude of point A in relation to point B.

6. The students do single‑choice exercises, perfecting the ability to read relative and absolute altitudes from contour line drawings.

7. The teacher presents the physical map of Poland. The teacher proposes the students to look closely at the map and pay attention to the colours. The teacher asks the students to name all colours and determine which of them is considered to be warm and which is cool. Then, the teacher explains that these colours form the hipsometric colour scale, in which warm colours correspond to convex forms and which to cold colours - concave forms. The scale of hipsometric colours makes a map more vivid - it makes the information on the relief of a given area more expressive.

8. The students get familiar with the fragment of the abstract discussing the hypsometric method and make a note. Eager students can read it on the class forum.

9. The teacher gives geographical atlases to the students. Working in pairs, the students analyse the colours of the physical map of Europe and interpret them in relation to the hypsometric scale.

Summary

1. The students independently do an interactive exercise: they prepare a crossword puzzle the main password of which is „altitude”, and the questions and answers are related to the topic of the classes. After the time set by the teacher, the volunteers present the results of their work.

2. The teacher assesses the students' work during the classes, taking into account their activity and individual possibilities.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

How to present absolute and relative altitude and land sculpture

Creators of historic maps did not manage presentation of land morphology and its altitude above sea level with ease. They would draw little mounds, hatched and shadowed mountains slopes which aimed to show variation of land sculpture.

Finally, invention of contour line method turned out to be a breakthrough. Contour lines (also called isohypses) are lines on a map, connecting points with identical altitude, above or below sea level. The closer two contour lines are, the steeper is the slope. The farther they are, the milder the slope.

This method evolved into the hypsometric method, consisting in combination of contour lines, showing land morphology, with appropriate colouration. In this method, spaces between contour lines are coloured according to the hypsometric colour scale, using cold and warm colours. The hypsometric method employs properties of human vision. Warm colours, e.g. yellow, orange, red, seem to be closer to the observer, and cold colours, e.g. green, blue, seem to be more distant. Therefore, convex forms, such as mountains and highlands, are marked with warm colours, and concave forms or forms lying at lower altitude, are marked with cold colours.

With application of contour line map or hypsometric map, it is possible to determine altitude differences between adjacent objects on a map with quite good accuracy. Altitude difference between two objects (e.g. between a mountain peak and a valley lying at its base) is called relative altitude. It is also possible to read altitude difference between a selected point and the sea level – this difference is called absolute altitude