Compass Rose Wall Display

Really Good Stuff® Activity Guide Compass Rose Wall Display

Congratulations on your purchase of the Really Good Stuff® Bulletin Board Display Compass Rose Wall Display—an interactive resource to Punch out the compass rose and direction labels. You teach your class about the points of the compass. can hang the labels on the appropriate walls in your classroom or display them in the correct positions ® This Really Good Stuff product includes: around the compass rose on your bulletin board. • Compass Rose Wall Display, 39" by 12" • Detachable cardinal and ordinal direction labels Interactive Compass Rose Activities • This Really Good Stuff® Activity Guide • Ask your students which way is North (can they find the label card?). Call on a student to find South, Introducing the Compass Rose Wall Display another to find East, and another to find West. Have Begin by discussing its history. Tell your class that the your class face or point to different cardinal and compass rose gets its name from its shape, which ordinal directions as you call them out. Take your class resembles the petals of a rose. Cartographers outside and ask them to locate North, South, East, (mapmakers) have been drawing them on maps since the and West. Remind them that the sun rises in the East 1300s (more than seven hundred years!). Pedro Reinel, a and sets in the West. Quickly call out the cardinal and Portuguese cartographer, is credited with drawing the ordinal directions and see if they can follow them. first standard compass rose. Originally, a compass rose indicated wind direction in the area the map depicted, • Make copies of the Compass Rose Reproducible. but now it is used on many types of maps to indicate Have your class color in the compass rose and fill in geographic direction. Both a compass rose and an actual the cardinal and ordinal compass points and their compass show the user which way is North, but the abbreviations. compass rose points in the direction of true, or geographic, north. An actual compass points to • Make a copy of the compass needle shown below. magnetic north. Attach the needle to the compass rose with a common brad. Have students take turns turning the needle and A standard compass rose has 32 points, one for each announcing different compass points. point on the compass. Naming all 32 points is called “boxing the compass,” and was a basic test for every • Give the compass rose with the needle to your able-bodied seaman. Our Compass Rose Wall Display students and let them “navigate” through the includes labels for the four cardinal directions: North, classroom. Have them write the compass directions on South, East, West; and the four ordinal directions: a piece of paper as they travel to the pencil sharpener Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. When or bookshelf. Let other students take a turn and try to North is indicated at the top of the compass rose, follow the directions to the correct destination. South is at the bottom, East is to the right, and West is to the left. A mnemonic device for your students to learn is “Never Eat Shredded Wheat,” which lists the initials of the cardinal points in clockwise order.

Compass Needle Reproducible

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Name ______Date ______Compass Rose

Fill in the compass rose above. Write the direction and its abbreviation.

KEY: N = North, S = South, E = East, W = West, NE = Northeast, NW = Northwest, SE = Southeast, SW = Southwest