A Lesson Plan of Life Environment Studies for Developing Spatial Cognition (II) : In the Light of Children's Spatial Cognition in School Building

This paper aims (1) to examine children's spatial cognition in school building by useing hand-worked maps as an aid, and (2) to specify condition for developing their spatial cognition. The finding was that it is important for first graders to tackle perspective-taking task from another viewpoint by changing their position. The following four conditions were specified for developing a lesson plan which helps to develop their spatial cognition. (1) To help children get interested in people and places. (2) To engage children in the fieldwork in the process of project learning, or problem solving learning. (3) To adopt the activities of making hand-worked maps, or communicating information on the spaces to each other. (4) To develop and adopt the new activities concerning perspective-taking task