North Carolina maps and related lesson plans

North Carolina Maps is a comprehensive, online collection of historic maps of the Tar Heel State. Featuring maps from three of the state’s largest map collections — the North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Outer Banks History Center — North Carolina Maps provides an unprecedented level of access to these materials. North Carolina Maps contains more than 2,000 maps, ranging in date from the late 1500s to 2000, and including detailed maps for each of North Carolina’s one hundred counties.

North Carolina Maps’ K-12 section is devoted to helping teachers use the interactive maps included in the database. Included in this section are essays instructing teachers on how to incorporate maps into the classroom, an illustrated history of maps of North Carolina, and dozens of lesson plans using the maps on the site. The lesson plans span all age groups from kindergarten to twelfth grade and every core subject from environmental science to U.S. history. Math teachers can even teach algebra using a map lesson plan!

One of the site’s most popular lesson plans is the eighth-grade lesson “Webquest: Building an Historic District.” In this lesson, students explore the city of Oxford using overlay maps that switch from 1882 to the present day, and they can find where local schools, grocery stores, and movie theaters were located.

Blog post provided by Jennifer Job, Documenting the American South/UNC Libraries