Teaching map skills across the curriculum

The following information was obtained based on a lesson from:
Melber & Hunter (2010) Integrating language arts and social studies (48-54)

Map skills are one part of the social studies standards in Virginia. There are many ways to teach such a lesson, but one way that I never considered was to integrate the lesson with language arts. The lesson could start in language arts with a read aloud about maps and then continue with the students manipulating an Atlas, globe, map, etc. The teacher could have the students compare and contrast the different manipulatives and then create a writing piece that discussed which object would be the most helpful in planning a trip. During the social studies portion of the lesson the teacher may choose to take the students on a walk around the community or school grounds. At this time the student would be responsible for creating a map of the area around which they are walking. Accomodations for special needs children would be a map template that they would fill in with the objects of their choice. As a challenge the students would use a compass rose to label the cardinal directions of the map. For ESL students the teacher could go prior to the walk and label the objects in thier native language. ESL and special needs students would also need to be provided with a copy of the read aloud.