There are two ways to describe a location: relative and absolute. Relative location describes where a place is in relation to another place, using directional terms like east, west, north, south, northeast, and southwest. Absolute location provides precise coordinates of latitude and longitude. The document focuses on relative location and asks students to practice using cardinal and intermediate directions to describe locations on maps. Students are asked questions to label the direction of states relative to each other and write sentences using cardinal and intermediate directions based on maps.

1. Absolute and Relative Location

2. How do we get there? There are two ways to answer this question…if you would like to determine a place’s location relative to someplace else, then you are looking at its Relative Location. For example : My apartment building is just east of the Saturday Market. Or Meet me at the Starbucks that is next to the park. Or India is located west of Bangladesh and south of Nepal.

3. How do we get there? Another way to answer this question is by giving an absolute location . An absolute location is the specific coordinates of a place on the earth. For example: Vancouver, British Columbia is located at 50 degrees North and 127 degrees West.

4. Relative Location For now, we are going to focus on Relative location. Specifically, we would like you to be able to refer to places on a map in terms of where they are located relative to other places…AND we want you to use your cardinal and intermediate directions correctly. 

5. A Quick Review… Cardinal Directions: North South East West Intermediate directions Northeast Northwest Southeast Southwest

6. Your Task Open to your MAP SKILLS page in your SS file, and create a subheading for Relative Location. Use a classroom desk atlas to answer the following questions about relative location. Feel free to ask your table mates for help if you need it. There are two sets of questions. We’ll review the answers to the first set together in 5 minutes and then move on to the second set. 

7. Questions Use the map on page 68 and 69 to fill in the blanks using the cardinal directions: Tennessee is _________ of Kentucky. Georgia is __________ of Florida. Ohio is ___________ of Pennsylvania. Colorado is __________ of Utah. Oregon is __________ of California

8. Questions Using a map or maps of your choice, write three sentences using the cardinal directions and three sentences using the intermediate directions . You may use countries, cities or physical features. Please list the map you used for each sentence you write. Example: Map—p. 112 Sentence: Bolivia is northeast of Chile.