Make a contour map
Geoactive 2, third edition, chapter 2, pages 24–5
1. Place a lump of clay (about the size of a tin of soup) onto your paper or card mat. Model it with your hands into a realistically shaped landform (with a flat bottom) that is exactly 10 centimetres high.
2. Use the flat end of your pencil to poke two holes carefully through the centre of your landform, right down through the base. Remove the pencil.
3. Hold a ruler vertically beside your landform and make marks at two-centimetre intervals up that side. (You will make four marks.)
4. Stretch a length of fishing line tightly between both hands and slice your model into parts along the marks you made. Start by slicing off the top layer and work down. Be sure to keep the fishing line horizontal as you cut.
5. Place the bottom slice in the centre of a clean piece of paper, and trace around it carefully with a pencil. Push the pencil through the two holes in the clay to leave two dots. Remove the bottom slice from the paper and go over your dots to make them more obvious.
6. Lay the next slice up from the bottom on the paper and position it so you can see the two dots in the centre of the two holes. Trace around the second layer.
7. Repeat this procedure for the other layers until your contour map is complete. Add the title, contour values, and contour interval for your landform. You may like to darken your contour lines with a black pen.
8. Reassemble your landform and place it next to your completed contour map for classroom display.
9. You have used geography-based skills to represent a lump of clay as a contour map. Suggest, as part of a class discussion, how information about the shape of this piece of clay might be conveyed using English skills, mathematical skills, ICT modelling skills and art skills.