George Lucas Educational Foundation

Exploring Writing, Social Studies, and Math in a Map Challenge

Encouraging students to bring their creativity and imagination to challenging content makes it more accessible—and helps them learn it more deeply.

November 29, 2023

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Each fifth grader in Andrea Ketcham’s class in Eminence, Kentucky, has been charged with creating a world and asking someone else to navigate it. In this interdisciplinary project, students use a range of skills—from spatial awareness and mapmaking to communication skills and coding. To touch on English language arts standards, students use descriptive language to write about their imaginary land. Next, to align with social studies standards, they’re tasked with drawing a map depicting it, complete with key features like grid points and a compass rose. When their maps are complete, the students come up with questions that challenge a classmate to identify characteristics of their land and program a Sphero BOLT robot to follow directions and get to a specific destination. By the end, students have mastered content from multiple subject areas—and stayed engaged and excited through the whole process.

To learn more about the research behind the practices seen in the video, check out the resources below.

Judith M. Harackiewicz, Jessi L. Smith, and Stacy J. Priniski’s article advocating for the importance of interest in educational motivation (2016)
Sally P. W. Wu and Martina A. Rau’s review of research on how students learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content through drawing activities (2019)
Logan Fiorella and Shelbi Kuhlmann’s study on how creating drawings enhances learning (2020)
Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, and Melissa E. Meade’s research on the connection between drawing and memory (2018)
Maja Umek’s comparison of the effectiveness of two teaching methods in beginning cartographic description: drawing maps and reading maps (2010)

Schools That Work

Eminence Independent Schools

Public, Rural

Grades K–12

Eminence, KY

The Eminence Independent Schools district was failing less than a decade ago. Enrollment was declining, and test scores and morale were plummeting in the small, rural, Title 1 district in Eminence, Kentucky. To save the district and the town, Buddy Berry, the superintendent, initiated sweeping changes that were identified by the students themselves.

With community buy-in, the district built a 30,000-square-foot technology-focused building with eight makerspaces to foster personalized learning, made time for students to design and solve real-world problems, and developed an early college program to prepare students for college. The district also adopted a “surprise and delight” culture—focusing on ways to boost student and staff morale. The district’s efforts paid off: Graduation rates and college persistence rates have increased, and enrollment has doubled.

Achieved 100% College and/or Career Readiness by Kentucky state standards for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015.
99.5% of early college program participants are either on track to earn a college degree or have already done so.
Selected to attend the 2014 ConnectED to the Future Convening at the White House.