Canada

Alberta Orienteering Association (AOA)

The AOA has excellent programs; for current information, see their website.

AOA Lesson Plans and Activities

• TRY IT program is a 1-hour session with 3 stations: physical literacy games, fun agility stations and navigation & map reading. They can handle 60 students at one time.

• Their excellent Orange Marks the Spot curriculum has 6 1-hour (or 90-minute) lesson plans aimed at kids 5-12 years old. It was developed in partnership with the Be Fit For Life Network. Each lesson lists objectives, fundamental movement skills, equipment, and language to use in introducing the stations. Each lesson has a warm-up and then 3 stations (movement, agility/strength, and navigation). The default is to use a Google map (aerial imagery view). This allows early use of map and compass, but without using an abstract orienteering map. Throughout, different ways of movement can be used by calling them out during the activity.

  • Cardinal Directions. After a warm up game, three stations - tag, agility/balance, and exploring/navigating. In the first two stations, there is reference to the cardinal directions (N, E, S, W). In the third station, they're give a map and compass; they orient the map, look at features, turn and keep the map oriented, identify features on the map to explore and go out to find it and come back. "To the North you will find a bench... GO!"

  • Introduction to Controls: Applying Navigation. Warm up with There & Back Again. Key ideas are controls and landmarks. Station 3 is Star Orienteering. Use a compass to find a North feature, and then use that feature for orienting the maps. In partners, visit each control and come back. Punch or stamp at each control.

  • Navigating on a Course. Objectives are navigating while orienting the map after each control, and relocating. Regular orienteering course.

  • Navigating by Memory. Catching features and memory of important map details. Map is at start; star-orienteering but you can't take a map with you. Know your catching feature.

  • Placing and Finding Controls on a Course. Key ideas: placing controls; navigating safely home. Place Your Flag: partner places marker and marks location on a map. Capture the Flag: each team has 3 flags; classic CtF. Variation allows putting the locations on maps and exchanging the maps at the beginning.

  • Applying Navigation and Outdoor Exploration Skills. Warm up activity Deer Ears encourages listening and awareness of environment. Everyone plays Treasure Hunt: each control has a clue; combine the clues to figure out where the treasure map is hidden. The treasure map has 2 treasure locations on it.

Summary of Orange Marks the Spot

Lesson	Warmup	Movement	Agility	Navigation
1	Circle Throw	Get in the Zone Tag	Moving in All Directions; Hold That Pose	Explore to a feature
2	There & Back Again	Float the Pond	Agility & Strength	Star-orienteering
3	Opposites	Quadrant Game	Relay with Agility Ladders	Regular orienteering
4	Catch the Fish	Seek & Find with cues	Obstacle course	Map at start only; use catching features
5	Poster activities	Mirror-Mirror	Place Your Flag	Capture the Flag
6	Deer Ears	-	-	Treasure Hunt

Thoughts on OMtS

This is an excellent program, with great structure within each lesson, and a good progression. Particularly awesome:

• Introducing cardinal directions early with fun games.

• Using the compass to identify a North feature and then using that feature to orient the map (instead of orienting the map with the compass)

• Consistent structure of warmup - stations - cooldown/reflection in each lesson

• Combining movement and agility with navigation

• A variety of progressive activities with the map.

• Use of an aerial image as the map instead of a more abstract representation. This eliminates the barrier of creating a custom map or drawing for each school.

Some thoughts about what might be hard and worth considering in implementation:

• In our (NG) experience, introducing the map to younger children is a challenge. Many children will understand it easily, but we need to make sure that every child is learning and not getting frustrated. In this series, the way that is done is by using an aerial photo, which is easier to interpret than a more abstract map, and therefore a very good choice. However, especially with younger kids, this curriculum is still moving fast on the map piece.

• Another challenge is classroom management over a wide area. For example, calling out movement instructions if the kids are far away may not work.

• Children need to know and absolutely stay within the boundaries of the play area. At the same time, especially for older children, you want them to have some challenge. Schools we have worked with vary in terms of whether kids are allowed to go out of sight.

• This curriculum uses the compass to identify North, and uses the cardinal directions a lot. This is different (but not necessarily worse!) than our choice which is to exclusively use features of the space for orientation, and introduce the more abstract cardinal directions and compass later.

• I'm guessing that each lesson, with 3 stations, would better fit into 90 minutes than one hour.

AOA Resources

Super useful:

• How to create a basic O map with Google Earth. A very thorough description, including turning off labels in Google Earth/Maps, adding control circles, and creating clue/punch cards. They suggest using MS Word; Google slides is a tool that works well for us and is free.

• Producing Quick O Maps. This uses Open Orienteering Mapper or OCAD, starting from Open Street Map data (free). Note that newer versions of OOM and OCAD have tools that bring in OSM data from within the program.