Reading a novel from the ground it stands on.
Every one of these books happens somewhere. A family is driven off a farm and pointed down a numbered highway. A boy and a man drift south on a river that is carrying them the wrong way. Put those places on a map and the story stops being background and starts being evidence — something students can trace, measure, and argue with.
Each study pairs an interactive map with the text, and with a bank of questions built on three levels.
What's where?
Location, description, and spatial vocabulary. Students read the map itself before they interpret anything.
Why is it there?
The processes that put things in their places — rivers, rainfall, roads, borders, money, and power.
What's the relationship to me?
Comparison, connection, and personal geography. The step where a map becomes an argument about the student's own world.
Storygrounds offer an interactive map with key locations or routes in a novel. Storygrounds are not lessons, but resources that can be combined with your planned instruction to aid in widening the learner's gaze. Optional, spatial questions are provided to help learners examine the reading through the lens of geography — offering a powerful connection and perspective for considering other literary elements in the reading.
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