Ramey sixth-graders open geography class with paper maps and a campus relic

Sixth-graders in Dr. Velazquez’s Eastern World Geography class at Ramey Unit School started the course the old way: with paper, pencils, and maps that predate GPS.

Students first listed where they were born and the states they have lived in or visited. For military-connected families who move with the assignment, that quickly produced a working map of shared American places rather than a lecture on a distant region.

They then unfolded vintage state road maps, traced routes, read symbols, and picked out landmarks. Students said the work made them think harder than following a phone. Ms. Rapatz added a hand-drawn 1997 map of the Ramey campus, originally used to locate and record trees on the grounds. The sketch tied geography to the school they attend in northwest Puerto Rico and showed why careful observation and record-keeping still matter.

The class also discussed how pilots and boat captains once used charts and instruments before digital navigation. Students were surprised at how different travel looked only a generation or two ago.

The first-day work built map-reading, source analysis, and a clearer sense of the country and campus they already inhabit. Eastern World Geography comes next. The tools they practiced on familiar ground are the ones they will use when the map moves farther from home.