Can you create a landform from a topographic map?

Team Gibbas students have been learning about landforms and topographic maps in science.  This week students were partnered up and tasked with the assignment to create a landform out of a clay.  Next students measured the height of their landform in centimeters. Then students used dental floss to cut their landform into 1 cm. wide discs and traced each disc onto graph paper to create a topographic map.  Finally, there was a challenge.  A different partner group was given the topographic map and they had to try to create a landform that matched the original by using the topographic map.

Students did a fabulous job learning about landforms and how to create and read topographic maps!

Grade 4 Common Core Standard: 4-ESS2-2: Analyze and interpret maps of Earth's mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, and earthquake epicenters to describe patterns of these features and their locations relative to boundaries between continents and oceans.