Oil Map Activity

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/06/business/20071107_WINNERSLOSERS_GRAPHIC.html#

The above link was used to help create an interactive 3rd grade oil map activity. My third grade students are always interested in using the internet to seek and learn new information. I can definitely see using more interactive maps/graphs/charts in my classroom. As I was completing this assignment, I really thought about what information I really wanted my kids to learn by using this map. My objective was to have students see which country was the #1 top oil producer and compare that to the #10 oil producer. I further extended this lesson to have kids identify the top 3 oil producers and the continent that those countries are on.

To promote some higher level thinking, I asked kids to think about... 1) Why can Japan (a small country) consume 5.2 million barrels of oil each day, when Australia (a larger country) only consumes 920,000 thousand barrels of oil each day? 2)If the United States is a top supplier to themselves, where do you think we get (produce) our oil from? Use the internet to find your answer. In order for some kids to answer these questions, they will need to do some research on the internet. With both of these questions, students are asked to site references and give specific examples that support their answer.

I can see using more interactive maps/graphs/charts in my classroom. What it will take is me researching the internet and finding maps that will work for my third grade classroom.