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Keywords

English teaching, teaching maps, place-based narrative writing

Preview

At the beginning of a recent cross-country road trip, Johnny pulled open a map app on his phone and entered his final destination—Fort Worth, Texas—into the search bar, along with three other stops: the Maverik in Moab (he had to load up on Dr. Pepper); a hotel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico; and “Cadillac Ranch” in Amarillo (Google it). For the next 1,200 miles, the digital map guided him and his family along the path, setting the stage for experiences and stories that the family will tell and retell for years to come.

That example—the use of maps to guide our travels— may be familiar for many of us. What may not be quite as common, however, is the use of maps in the English classroom. Sure, we see maps often in the beginning of fantasy novels, and we may use them to help orient our students to settings and historical contexts related to the texts we read, but in this article we suggest maps can be a powerful tool to help students develop narrative writing skills and to share the places and stories that matter to them.

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