成人快手

What can you see on a map?

A map is a two-dimensional drawing of an area. Maps can show the countryside, a town, a country or even the whole world. They can be on paper or on a mobile phone, tablet or computer.

Children using a map and a compass.

People use maps to help plan routes from one place to another. They might also use a map to find certain features like hills or rivers, or a landmark such as a castle.

You can use different types of map depending on whether you are walking, driving or even flying somewhere.

Back to top

Watch: Maps with Sue Venir

Back to top

How do you use a map?

Cartoon of a compass.

The top of most maps is north and a compass can be used to find which direction north is. The needle of the compass always points north, so when it is lined up with the map, you can see in which direction things are.

The four main compass or cardinal directions are: north, east, south and west. The four points exactly in between each of these, are: north-east, south-east, south-west and north-west.

A real-life map.
Image caption,
Maps like the one above are drawn to a smaller scale than real life.

Maps are not drawn to the same size as the ground because they would be far too big. Instead they are drawn to a smaller scale.

The scale on a map is a set of numbers that can be used to compare distances and can be written, for example, as 1:25,000.

This means that the actual size of the ground is 25,000 times bigger than it is on the map.

The same scale can also be written as 4cm to 1km, so every four centimetres on the map is one kilometre in real life.

Cartoon map.
Back to top

Watch: Navigating and living in the UK

Learn more about map-reading in the UK in this video from 成人快手 Teach.

Back to top

Activity: Quiz 鈥 Using a map

Back to top

Bitesize Primary games. game

Play fun and educational primary games in science, maths, English, history, geography, art, computing and modern languages.

Bitesize Primary games
Back to top

More on Geography skills

Find out more by working through a topic