Using maps, atlases and globes
Geography · Key Stage 2 · The School
Three tools, three jobs
A GLOBE is the only one that shows the Earth’s true shape, so distances and sizes are honest — but you can only see half of it at once. An ATLAS is a book of flat maps at different scales, good for finding and comparing. A DIGITAL MAP can zoom from a continent to a doorstep and switch between street, satellite and terrain. Pick the one that answers your question.
Finding a place fast
Do not scan the page. Use the INDEX at the back: it lists places alphabetically with a page number and a grid square, like 42 C4. Turn to page 42, run across to column C and down to row 4, and the place is inside that square. Learning this takes two minutes and saves hours across the rest of your schooling.
Reading what a map tells you
Three things make a map readable. The KEY explains what each symbol and colour means — blue for water, green often for low land. The SCALE tells you what distance on the map means on the ground. The NORTH ARROW tells you which way it is oriented. A map without a key is a picture; with one it is evidence.
Find London and Tokyo on a flat world map and draw a straight line: it crosses Europe, Russia and China. Now stretch a piece of string between the same two cities on a GLOBE and pull it tight: it goes up over the Arctic. That second route is genuinely shorter, and it is the one aircraft fly. Flat maps have to distort something, and this is the distortion.