ACARA v9 CONTENT DESCRIPTION “interpret and create two-dimensional representations of familiar environments, locating key landmarks and objects relative to each other”
A plan, or map, of a room is a picture of it seen from straight above, as a bird would see it. That single idea explains why maps look the way they do: a round table becomes a circle, a rug becomes a rectangle, and the tall things you see from the side flatten into simple outlines. Year 3 learns to read and to draw these two-dimensional representations of familiar places — a classroom, a bedroom, a playground — and to locate the landmarks in them relative to one another. No grid or coordinates are needed yet; the power of a plan at this stage is showing what is next to, between, or across from what.
View from above
A map is what you would see looking straight down. Switch to the plan view.
This is a round table from the side: a table with legs. Now look at it from straight above.
Flattening the world onto paper
The first leap in understanding maps is realising that a plan shows the top of things, not their sides. Looking down on a table, you do not see its legs — only the round or rectangular shape of its top. A map keeps this top-down outline and throws away the height, which is exactly why a map can be flat and still be useful. Practising the switch between the side view a child is used to and the plan view from above is the foundation of all map reading, and it makes the strange flat shapes on a map suddenly make sense.
Read the plan
A labelled plan of a room lets you answer where things are.
What is next to the door?
What is next to the door?
Reading a labelled plan
Once a plan is drawn and its parts are labelled, it can answer questions about a place without being there. Where is the door? What is beside the reading corner? A labelled plan of a classroom turns those questions into something a child can simply look up, which is what makes maps so useful in real life — for finding a room, a shop, or a way through a park. Interpreting a two-dimensional representation, exactly as the descriptor asks, begins with reading the labels and seeing how the pieces are arranged.
Where is it?
Position words like between, above and left describe where things are relative to each other.
The rug is ___ the desk and the shelf.
Fill the gap using the plan: "The rug is ___ the desk and the shelf."
Words for where things are
A plan is read with position words: next to, between, above, below, left and right. The rug is between the desk and the shelf; the window is above the rug on the plan; the door is to the left of the desk. These relative words are how we describe location without numbers, and they work because a map fixes where everything sits in relation to everything else. Building fluency with position language is the heart of this unit, since locating landmarks relative to one another, as the curriculum puts it, is precisely what these words do.
Follow the route
A path on a plan can be described by the landmarks it passes.
Start at the door. Follow the path to the next landmark.
A route is a chain of landmarks
Maps are not only for finding single objects; they show paths from one place to another. A route can be described entirely by the landmarks it passes: start at the door, go past the desk, reach the rug, arrive at the window. Following a route on a plan is reading a sequence of relative positions in order, and it is the same skill a child uses to give directions in real life. At Year 3 the route needs no grid or distances — naming the landmarks in the right order is enough to describe and follow the way.
Same room, smaller plan
A plan can be drawn smaller than the real room while keeping every relative position.
Here is the room at full size on the plan. Shrink it and watch what stays the same.
Smaller on paper, same arrangement
A real room is far bigger than the paper a plan is drawn on, so a plan is always smaller than the place it shows. The important idea is that shrinking the plan does not change the arrangement: the door stays beside the desk, the rug stays between the desk and the shelf, no matter how small the drawing. This informal sense of scale — smaller in size but true in position — is what lets a tiny map stand for a whole building, and it prepares the ground for the precise scales and grids of later years without needing them yet.
Place the object
Creating a plan is placing each object in the position the words describe.
Creating a plan means placing things in the right spot. Put the bin NEXT TO the door.
Creating your own plan
The descriptor asks children to create plans as well as read them, and creating is placing each object where the position words say it belongs: the bin next to the door, the plant between the desk and the window. Making a plan is the reverse of reading one — instead of looking up where something is, you decide where to put it and draw it there, keeping every relative position correct. With the bird's-eye view, labelled plans, position words, routes, informal scale and plan-making all in hand, a child can both interpret and create two-dimensional maps of the familiar places around them, completing the Year 3 Space strand.
Quick self-check
1. Seen from straight above, a round table on a map looks like a...
2. On the plan the rug sits between the desk and the shelf. The rug is...
3. A route goes from the door, past the desk, to the window. It passes the...
4. A plan drawn smaller than the real room still keeps the...
5. A two-dimensional plan of a room is a view from...