Map Skills Jeopardy

Compass roses, map keys, grids, and landforms in a map skills review for elementary grades. Copy it free; students buzz in from their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

For the classroom

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Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Compass Rose

$200
On most maps, this direction points to the top.
What is north?
$400
Every morning, the sun rises in this direction.
What is east?
$600
North, south, east and west are called these four main directions.
What are the cardinal directions?
$800
This direction is exactly halfway between south and west.
What is southwest?
$1,000
Northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest are called these directions because they fall in between.
What are intermediate (ordinal) directions?

Map Keys and Symbols

$200
On most maps, this color shows water such as lakes, rivers and oceans.
What is blue?
$400
A small picture that stands for a real thing, like a tent for a campground, is called this.
What is a symbol?
$600
This part of a map, usually at the top, tells you what the map is about.
What is the title?
$800
The map key is also called this, a word that can also mean an old story.
What is a legend?
$1,000
A star inside a circle usually marks this kind of city, where the government of a state or country meets.
What is a capital?

Grid Coordinates

$200
On a map grid, lines going up and down make columns, and lines going side to side make these.
What are rows?
$400
To name a square on a map grid, you use a letter and one of these.
What is a number?
$600
On a grid with letters across the top, moving one square to the right from C4 lands you in this square.
What is D4?
$800
On a grid with numbers down the side, moving two squares down from B2 lands you in this square.
What is B4?
$1,000
These imaginary lines circle the globe east to west and measure how far north or south a place is.
What are lines of latitude?

Map Scale

$200
A map scale helps you find this, how far apart two places really are.
What is distance?
$400
A scale bar on a map looks a lot like this measuring tool you keep in your pencil box.
What is a ruler?
$600
If 1 inch on a map equals 10 miles, then 2 inches on the map equals this many miles.
What is 20 miles?
$800
If 1 inch on a map equals 50 miles, a road that measures 3 inches on the map is this long.
What is 150 miles?
$1,000
If 1 centimeter on a map equals 100 kilometers, two cities 7 centimeters apart are this far apart.
What is 700 kilometers?

Landforms and Water

$200
This is the tallest kind of landform, with steep sides and a high peak.
What is a mountain?
$400
This piece of land has water all the way around it.
What is an island?
$600
This piece of land has water on three sides, like the state of Florida.
What is a peninsula?
$800
This deep, narrow valley with steep sides is often carved by a river, like the Grand one in Arizona.
What is a canyon?
$1,000
This flat-topped landform with steep sides gets its name from the Spanish word for table.
What is a mesa?

Globes and Hemispheres

$200
A globe is a model of Earth shaped like this round 3-D shape, like a ball.
What is a sphere?
$400
Earth's two halves, split by the imaginary line around its middle, are the Northern Hemisphere and this one.
What is the Southern Hemisphere?
$600
This imaginary line runs through Greenwich, England, and splits Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
What is the prime meridian?
$800
The United States is in the Northern Hemisphere and in this one, too.
What is the Western Hemisphere?
$1,000
The prime meridian and the line of 0 degrees latitude cross each other in the ocean just off the coast of this continent.
What is Africa?

Final Jeopardy — Around the Middle

This imaginary line circles Earth halfway between the North Pole and the South Pole.

What is the equator?

How to run this board

This board teaches students to read a map rather than memorize one. Columns cover cardinal and intermediate directions, map keys and symbols, using a grid to find a square, measuring with a map scale, telling landforms and bodies of water apart, and the lines and hemispheres of a globe.

Print a simple town map with a grid and key for each team before you start. Several clues become much easier to answer when students can put a finger on the page, and the teams that use the map win.

For third and fourth graders, let the winning team on a direction clue give the next clue's directions aloud: two squares north, one square east. It is a good check on whether they really have it.

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