Have you ever heard of orienteering? If you’ve ever been on a hike, a run or a walk along a natural trail, odds are you’ve covered some of the basic elements of orienteering without even realizing it.

It’s a sport – a navigation sport to be more precise. The use of a compass is key to understanding directions, as well as how to read a map. A timed race across a landscape, map-reading skills and the use of a compass are key to this activity.

Toward the end of the school year, The Press was invited to take part in an orienteering activity as part of the Salisbury Middle School sixth grade outdoor program. Led by Language Arts teacher Kara Bellis, a group of students learned the basics of reading directions using a compass.

“The Chinese invented the first compass. It was not a compass like we use. It was a little different,” Bellis explained to her class at the start of this section. She explained how iron was used to develop a magnetic compass for navigation.

Showing a modern-day compass to her students, Bellis asked, “How many degrees do you think there are in this compass? It is a circular edge. How many degrees would be on it? 360.”

How about north, east, south and west? There is a specific name for this order. It is called cardinal directions. They are commonly used as a reference throughout the world and are based on the direction of the sun.

Bellis also explained the concept of ordinal directions, the midpoint between each cardinal direction.

After explaining the basic concepts on how to use a compass, Bellis took her students to the back grounds of the school. Giving them different directions, the student learned how to put to practice what they learned.