A Quick, Low Prep Way to Practice Latitude and Longitude!

One of the basic geography skills my seventh grade students really struggle with is using latitude and longitude to find absolute location.  I had been looking for a quick and easy, low prep way that didn't involve making a bunch of copies to practice latitude and longitude when I came up with this idea while driving to work!

​PREP

I recently inherited a class set of the maps shown in the picture above from an older teacher, so I use them, but any map with latitude and longitude would work just as well - your students could even work in groups with larger maps.

Besides having maps, the only other preparation is using whichever map your students are going to use to find and write the latitude and longitude coordinates of various places or physical features - states, countries, oceans, bays, anything they can find - on notecards (also shown in the picture above).

​STEPS

1. When your students enter the class, give each a 1/4 sheet of notebook paper and ask them to number 1-10 (or however many practice locations you want to do).
2. Shuffle your deck of locations (I think I have like 60 or 70 of them) so that this activity doesn't get stale, or they start memorizing the answers.  - Brief aside - I learned this the hard way.  All my students now know that the Laptev Sea can be found at 75 degrees North and 135 degrees East by heart...
3. Draw out cards and read out the latitude and longitude coordinates while writing them on the board.  I also tell them what they're looking for - EX: "The state at ___North and ___ West."
4. At the end, we quickly check answers.

As a competition, I have been recording the percentage of each class that gets at least 80% correct (mastery).  The classes like to compete against each other, and I am left with data showing this skill is increasing across all my classes - I have gone from the 40's% proficient to above 70% in all my classes!

​So, I hope you like this activity, and if you use it, please let me know how it went in the comments.  If you are looking for more basic geography building activities, please check out the resources I have to offer in my TpT store, and if you like what you see, please be sure to follow this blog and my TpT store for more great ideas!

• Geography Resources
• My Store