Page 36 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Canadian and World Studies

THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Canadian and World Studies
SPATIAL SKILLS: USING MAPS, GLOBES, AND GRAPHS
Spatial skills underpin spatial literacy, enabling students to develop and communicate a sense of place. Map, globe, and graphing skills help students visualize and make meaning of spatial data. These skills help students understand how data relating to three-dimensional spaces can be represented on two-dimensional surfaces. In the twenty-first century, a range of spatial technologies can assist students in their inquiries, and it is important that students develop the skills needed to use these technologies. Although students learn spatial skills in geography, they apply them, in conjunction with the concepts of disciplinary thinking, in all subjects in the Canadian and world studies curriculum. In addition, students may apply these skills in everyday contexts and in other subjects.
Using Spatial Skills and the Spatial Skills Continuum
While students have opportunities to develop their spatial skills in all subjects in the Canadian and world studies curriculum, these skills are particularly central to geography. In order to highlight the use of spatial skills in that subject, some of the specific expectations are followed by an element, “using spatial skills”, that suggests how students might apply particular spatial skills related to the content of the expectation.
To provide teachers with a clear indication of appropriate skill development throughout the social studies, history, geography, and Canadian and world studies program, selected spatial skills have been organized into a continuum, which appears in Appendix C to this document (see page 546). This continuum illustrates progression in the categories of map and globe skills (divided into map elements and spatial representation) and graphing skills from Grades 1 to 12.
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