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In the case of Fig. 5.2 , the pupil Leo also opted for a bird's eye view, showing the
route to be a long trajectory with detailed representation of the reference points
showing the path to be followed from his home, such as the pub, park, bakery,
traffic light, butcher's shop, supermarket and health clinic, respectively.
In the case of pupil Jo˜o (Fig. 5.3 ), the representation was a profile of the route,
causing us to infer that the topographic references to height or differences of level,
stood out on the route and in the pupil's understanding about the environment he
lives in, and for this reason they were included in the drawing by means of
representation in profile.
Upon analyzing the work developed by Telmo (1986) cited in Almeida ( 2003 )of
a study that addressed the representation of space by children, in this case the route
from home to school, the author concludes:
The results of this study showed that, although children have different points of view, they
are far from knowing how to coordinate them within a single system of perspectives. They
also showed that one of the keys for the representation of three-dimensional space is the
ability to manipulate the inclined lines to draw an object. The appearance of this ability
appears to be linked to the discovery that an inclined plane represents implicit information
rather than concrete information.
Figures 5.1 , 5.2 and 5.3 illustrate the difficulty the pupils have with coordination
as cited in Almeida ( 2003 ), in which representations are depicted from different
points of view in the same representation.
In Fig. 5.1 , the object “street” was represented as an aerial view, while the homes
and businesses were facing up. In our view, the effect of this depiction of the
buildings adopted by pupil sought to explain to the reader the differences between
the objects that are on the route, e.g. the homes, the businesses and the vegetable
garden, the latter represented by a clear sign. The pupil intuitively sought to explain
in this representation, implicit information vertically that might not be visible in a
representation from above. This fact confirms their difficulty in coordinating the
representation of all the objects in a single perspective, which is due to them not
having sufficient conceptual elements to present the representation vertically when
preparing the sketch map.
In Fig. 5.2 we observed that through the drawing the pupil conveys to the reader
the long trajectory he takes to get to school. He selects some common day-to-day
objects, e.g. businesses and services (pub, bakery, butcher's shop, supermarket and
health clinic) and uses symbols to make certain objects stand out on the route, such
as a traffic light and an amusement park (represented by drawing two swings for
children). His effort, in practicing cartographic generalization and simplifying the
route, while informing the reader about the complexity of the path (represented by a
series of curves) and its main objects for reference to assist movement and orienta-
tion in the space, makes his representation similar to the representation used in
some touristic maps.
Figure 5.3 shows the relief as determinant factor for representation of the route
from house to school, whose trajectory traverses a valley that separates the two
main objects of interest. The representation of the road from a bird's eye view (the
division of the two lanes indicated using a dashed line as the symbol) and
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