Coordinates at Boreal Reach

Finding Places in a Snowy Town

Boreal Reach is a snowy northern town where the winter nights are long. A fourth-grade class is making an atlas page about the town. Their teacher reminds them that an atlas and a globe use a grid of imaginary lines to help people find places. The lines are not roads or borders. They are tools for describing location.

Lines of latitude run around Earth from east to west. They tell how far north or south a place is from the equator. The equator is the line at 0 degrees latitude. Lines of longitude run from the North Pole to the South Pole. They tell how far east or west a place is from the prime meridian. The prime meridian is the line at 0 degrees longitude. Latitude lines are also called parallels because they do not cross one another. Longitude lines meet at the poles.

The class writes a coordinate pair with latitude first and longitude second. For example, 67° N, 24° E means 67 degrees north of the equator and 24 degrees east of the prime meridian. Both numbers matter. One number tells which latitude line to use, and the other tells which longitude line to use. The place is at the point where those two lines cross.

On the class map of Boreal Reach, the town hall is at 67° N, 24° E. The weather hut is at 68° N, 24° E. The rail stop is at 67° N, 25° E. The ice museum is at 66° N, 23° E. The pine lookout is at 68° N, 26° E, and the lake cabin is at 66° N, 25° E. North is at the top of this map. The class can use the coordinate pairs to compare the places instead of guessing from their names.