General Overview
Performance Expectation 2-ESS2-2: Develop a model to represent the shapes and kinds of land and bodies of water in an area.
Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include quantitative scaling in models.
A map is one of humanity’s oldest and most powerful tools. Long before writing systems were standardized, humans were scratching representations of their landscapes into clay tablets, drawing river courses on bark, and carving coastlines into stone. Every map is a model: a selective, purposeful representation of reality that emphasizes the features most relevant to the mapper’s purpose while omitting detail that is not needed. A road map emphasizes streets and exits. A weather map emphasizes temperature and precipitation. A topographic map emphasizes elevation. A child’s map of their school neighborhood emphasizes landmarks relevant to their daily navigation. All of these are scientifically valid models, and the skill of making, reading, and evaluating maps is one of the most transferable competencies a second grader can develop.
2-ESS2-2 situates map-making squarely within the science and engineering practice of Developing and Using Models. The disciplinary core idea is ESS2.B (Plate Tectonics and Large-Scale System Interactions), specifically the component that states: maps show where things are located and one can map the shapes and kinds of land and water in any area. The crosscutting concept is Patterns: the distribution of land and water across Earth’s surface follows patterns that can be observed, described, and represented in models. Students who can build and interpret maps of land and water features are developing the spatial reasoning and representational literacy that underpin geology, oceanography, ecology, climate science, and environmental management throughout the rest of their education.
The standard specifies developing a model, not just reading one. This is an important distinction. Reading a map requires recognizing symbols and extracting information. Developing a map requires making decisions about what to include, how to represent it, what scale to use, and what conventions to follow. These design decisions are the same ones that professional cartographers and GIS specialists make, and experiencing them at the second-grade level, even in a simplified form, builds a deeper understanding of what maps can and cannot tell us than any amount of map-reading practice alone.
Scope and Sequence
In kindergarten, students were introduced to the idea that Earth’s surface has both land and water and that maps can show where features are located (K-ESS2-2). They created simple maps of their schoolyard and explored classroom globes. Those activities were primarily observational and representational in a loose sense. 2-ESS2-2 formalizes this into the scientific modeling practice: students are now explicitly developing models with the intent to represent patterns accurately and to communicate spatial information to others.
Also in Grade 2, 2-ESS2-3 examines where water is found on Earth in greater detail, including the distinction between salt water and fresh water and between liquid and solid water. The two standards work powerfully together: 2-ESS2-2 provides the representational framework (maps as models) and 2-ESS2-3 provides content knowledge about what those maps need to represent (the diverse forms and locations of water on Earth). Teaching them in close sequence, or interleaving them, allows each to reinforce the other.
In Grade 4, students return to maps with greatly increased sophistication: they analyze and interpret data from maps to describe patterns in the location of volcanoes, earthquake zones, and mountain ranges and connect these patterns to the boundaries of tectonic plates (4-ESS2-2). They also use topographic maps to describe and identify patterns of Earth’s features (4-ESS2-1). By middle school, students use GIS (Geographic Information System) data and satellite imagery to investigate Earth’s systems quantitatively. In high school, students use global climate models and digital elevation models to analyze Earth’s surface processes. The map literacy developed in Grade 2, including the understanding that a map is a purposeful, selective model, is the conceptual foundation for all of this later sophisticated analysis.
What Students Must Understand
A map is a model of a real place. It represents reality but is not reality itself. Every map simplifies, selecting some features to show and omitting others. A good map clearly shows what it is meant to show and helps the reader answer the question the map was designed to address. Maps of land and water use conventions that make them interpretable by others: blue typically represents water, while green, brown, or tan represents land. Color also commonly represents elevation, with darker greens for low elevations and browns or whites for high mountains. Lines can represent coastlines, rivers, or boundaries. Symbols represent specific features like mountains or cities. A legend explains what the symbols and colors mean. A map without a legend is incomplete because the reader cannot know what the mapper intended.
Earth’s surface is covered by a diverse variety of land forms and water bodies. Major landform types students should be able to identify and represent include mountains (high elevations formed by tectonic uplift or volcanic activity), hills (lower, gentler elevations), plains (flat or gently rolling lowlands), valleys (low areas between hills or mountains), plateaus (flat elevated surfaces), islands (land surrounded on all sides by water), and peninsulas (land surrounded by water on three sides). Major water body types include oceans (vast, salty bodies of water covering about 71 percent of Earth’s surface), seas (smaller saltwater bodies often partially enclosed by land), lakes (inland bodies of standing water, usually fresh), rivers (flowing water that drains downhill from high elevations to seas or lakes), streams (smaller flowing water bodies), ponds (small, shallow, enclosed water bodies), and bays or gulfs (areas of water partially enclosed by land).
The distribution of land and water on Earth follows patterns that scientists use to understand Earth’s history and processes. Most of Earth’s land is concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. The Pacific Ocean is larger than all of Earth’s land combined. Coastlines where land and water meet are constantly being reshaped by erosion and deposition. Mountain ranges often parallel coastlines, the result of tectonic collisions. Rivers flow from high elevation to low, always following gravity, and carve distinctive valley shapes that are readable as patterns on topographic maps. These patterns are not random and provide evidence about the forces that shaped Earth’s surface over billions of years.
Key vocabulary includes: map, model, landform, water body, ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, pond, mountain, hill, valley, plain, plateau, island, peninsula, bay, coastline, symbol, legend, scale, pattern, represent, and elevation.
Lesson Ideas and Activities
The core modeling activity is for students to create their own maps of a real area they know well, starting with the schoolyard or immediate neighborhood, then expanding to the local region, and finally to a larger area using satellite imagery or a physical classroom map as a reference. Begin with the schoolyard map: take students outside with clipboards and ask them to observe and sketch the main features, where is there pavement, grass, garden beds, buildings, and any water features? Back inside, students create a more careful map using a simple legend they design themselves. Share and compare maps: did everyone choose the same symbols? What would happen if someone who had never visited the school tried to use your map? This discussion directly addresses the modeling practice and the purpose of standardized conventions.
Landform and water body sorting is an effective vocabulary-building and conceptual activity. Provide students with a set of photographs showing diverse landforms and water bodies from around the world. Students sort the photographs into categories, then label each category with the correct term from a vocabulary bank. The discussion that arises during sorting is more valuable than the final product: “Is this a bay or a sea? What is the difference? What evidence in the photograph helps you decide?” Students then add labeled examples to a class anchor chart organized by landform type and water body type.
Three-dimensional model building connects tactile learning to spatial understanding. Students use clay, sand, blue-tinted water, and flat cardboard trays to build a three-dimensional landscape model that includes at least two kinds of landforms and two kinds of water bodies. After completing the 3D model, they switch to a 2D bird’s-eye drawing of the same landscape, making explicit the relationship between a physical landscape and a flat map representing it. This activity addresses the model practice directly: students are not just drawing a map, they are building a model and then translating it to a different representational format, which requires them to make conscious choices about what information is preserved and what is lost in each format.
Comparing maps of the same area at different scales is a powerful activity for building map literacy. Show students three maps of the same region: a zoomed-out world map where the region is barely visible, a regional map showing the state or country, and a local map showing individual neighborhoods and features. Ask: “What can you see on the local map that you cannot see on the world map? What can you see on the world map that you cannot see on the local map? Why would you use each one?” This develops the understanding that scale is a design choice that affects what information a map can convey.
Satellite imagery interpretation brings the modeling practice into contact with real scientific data. Many free satellite imagery tools, including NASA Worldview, Google Earth, and NOAA’s CoastWatch, allow students to view real aerial and satellite photographs of Earth’s surface at any scale. Show students a satellite image of a region they are studying and ask them to identify landforms and water bodies from the visual evidence alone, without labels or legends. Then compare to a labeled map of the same area: “How did the scientists who made this map know what to call this feature? What did they observe in the image that led them to label it a peninsula rather than an island?” This connects the map-making practice to the scientific observation and interpretation skills developed throughout the K-2 sequence.
A cross-curricular writing and research activity connects 2-ESS2-2 to ELA informational writing standards. Students research one landform or water body type in depth, using at least two provided sources, and create an informational poster that includes a definition, a photograph or illustration, a description of where this feature is commonly found, and their own hand-drawn map showing an example location. Posters are displayed in a class gallery walk, and students use sticky notes to add additional examples or questions to each other’s work. This activity develops both the content knowledge and the multi-source research skills that thread through the entire Grade 2 earth science sequence.
Common Student Misconceptions
One of the most widespread misconceptions is that a map is a photograph taken from above. While aerial and satellite photographs do contribute to modern map-making, a map and a photograph are fundamentally different representations. A photograph shows everything in the field of view with equal prominence. A map selectively emphasizes certain features, uses symbols and colors rather than realistic imagery, and includes labels and legends that photographs do not have. Students who conflate maps with photographs will have difficulty understanding why maps are sometimes more useful than photographs and why different maps of the same area can look so different from one another.
A second misconception is that all oceans and seas are connected and all land is separate. Students who have looked primarily at simple world maps may have developed an implicit model of water as one connected blue area and land as separate colored shapes. In reality, all of Earth’s oceans are connected as one global ocean, which has simply been given regional names for convenience. The Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans are all parts of a single interconnected body of salt water. Conversely, land masses that look separate on a small-scale map may be connected below the water line or were connected in the recent geological past before sea levels rose.
A third misconception is that rivers can flow in any direction, including uphill. Students who have not explicitly thought about the relationship between rivers and gravity may not realize that rivers always flow from higher to lower elevation, following the path of least resistance downhill. This matters for map interpretation because students need to understand that if they see a river on a map, they can infer the direction of slope even if no elevation data is shown. The stream table activity from 2-ESS2-1, where students observe water always flowing downslope, provides direct observational evidence that directly addresses this misconception if teachers make the connection explicit.
A fourth misconception is that the sizes of continents and countries shown on flat world maps are accurate representations of their actual areas. This is the map projection problem. Flat maps cannot represent a spherical surface without distortion. The commonly used Mercator projection, which is found in most classroom wall maps, significantly exaggerates the size of high-latitude landmasses like Greenland and Canada while making equatorial countries like Brazil and the Congo Basin appear smaller than they actually are. Greenland on a Mercator map appears roughly the same size as Africa, but Africa is actually about fourteen times larger in area. Showing students a globe alongside a flat map and asking them to compare the apparent sizes of major landmasses is an effective way to introduce this important limitation of flat maps.
A fifth misconception is that islands are always small. The word “island” suggests to many children a small sandy beach with a single palm tree. In fact, Greenland (about 2.1 million square kilometers), New Guinea (the world’s second largest island at about 786,000 square kilometers), and Borneo (about 748,000 square kilometers) are all islands, each larger than many countries. Australia is sometimes classified as a continent rather than an island precisely because its size makes the island classification feel inadequate, even though it is technically surrounded on all sides by water. The relevant scientific definition of an island is simply a landmass completely surrounded by water, regardless of size.
A sixth misconception is that all water on Earth’s surface is visible in maps as blue areas. In fact, large amounts of water exist underground as groundwater in aquifers, as soil moisture, as ice in permafrost and glaciers, as water vapor in the atmosphere, and as water stored in living organisms. The water that is visible on the surface as oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds represents only a fraction of Earth’s total water inventory. This connects to 2-ESS2-3 and is worth flagging as a preview: “When we map water on Earth’s surface, are we mapping all of Earth’s water? Where else might water be hiding?”
Assessment Questions
What is a map? How is a map similar to a model? How is it different from a photograph of the same place?
Look at your map of the schoolyard. What did you choose to include? What did you leave out? Why? If a stranger wanted to find the main entrance using your map, could they do it? What would help them?
Name three types of landforms and three types of water bodies. For each one, give a real example from somewhere in the world.
A map shows a river that runs from a mountain range into an ocean. Which direction does the water in the river flow? How do you know from looking at the map?
Here are two maps of the same area. One is a satellite photograph and one is a traditional map with symbols and a legend. What can you learn from the satellite photograph that you cannot learn from the traditional map? What can you learn from the traditional map that you cannot learn from the photograph?
You are designing a map of a lake and the land around it. What symbols will you use for water, hills, and forests? Draw a simple legend showing your choices. Why is a legend important?
A student says, “The ocean is not connected to any other water because the continents separate them.” Do you agree or disagree? What evidence would you use to support your answer?
Look at this globe and this flat world map. Find Greenland on each. Does Greenland look the same size on both? If not, which one shows its true size more accurately? Why might flat maps make some places look bigger or smaller than they really are?
Build or draw a model of a landscape that includes one mountain, one river, one lake, and one ocean. Make sure your model shows how these features connect to each other. Where does the river start? Where does it end? Why?