On Saturday, 29 December 2012, children from Cascade Resource Centre participated in a 'Roadside Geography!' interaction. Here are glimpses of the activity.

1. Cascade Resource Centre
Chennai
&
The Indian Institute of Geographical
Studies
Bangalore
‘Roadside geography’
Mapping a Chennai Street
Saturday, 29 December 2012

2. What we did indoors (1)
• We studied a small extract from a topographic
map in a school atlas.
• We learned how features are shown using
– Points
– Lines
– Areas

3. What we did outdoors
• We oriented ourselves and the page on which
the map is to be drawn using a magnetic
compass.
• We started from one end of our street and
started plotting buildings, trees (points), roads
(lines), and empty plots (areas).

4. What we did indoors (2)
• We filled in the legend box on the map sheet
showing the symbols and their meanings
• Earlier in the morning, we had watched a
documentary (‘The Paradox of the Andes’)
• So, at the end, each kid chose one concept or
idea that s/he had learned from the
documentary. A word related to it was painted on
the kid.
• We all had a lot of fun … and learned so much
that textbooks don’t teach us!

26. Organizer: Ms Vidya Shankar, Montessorian educator, Founder +
Chairperson, Relief Foundation, parent organization of
Cascade Resource Centre, Chennai
Presenter: Dr Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, Geographer.
Founder/Director, The Indian Institute of Geographical
Studies, Bangalore
Field help + photo credits (parents):
• Ms Malathi Mahadevan
• Ms Sandhiya Venkatesan
• Ms Rajeswari Bakkiyaraj

27. This was the first of many forthcoming collaborative
workshops between Cascade and TIIGS to be held in
Chennai and other places.
To organize such interactions in your neighborhood,
contact:
relieffoundationindia@gmail.com
or
geo@tiigs.org