9 Ways to Teach Spatial Thinking Across the Curriculum

When children assemble puzzles, build block towers, or follow instructions for folding three-dimensional origami figures, they’re using spatial skills—the ability to visualize, manipulate, and make sense of objects and their relationships in space. 

As adults, we rely on these skills when we use Google Maps to navigate through a new neighborhood, follow directions to build a piece of furniture, or efficiently pack a suitcase. Strong spatial skills are also critical for a wide range of careers from trades like carpentry and plumbing, to STEM and creative fields like graphic design and animation.

In classrooms, these skills are crucial for learning—and often, given short shrift. 

In math class, when students visualize three apples plus two apples when solving an equation like 3 + 2, or conjure a number line to solve 9 - 4, for example, they’re drawing on a “mental sketchpad,” says Elizabeth Gunderson, a psychology professor at Temple University. They also draw on spatial thinking to “visualize dynamic scientific processes,” interpret maps, graphs, and diagrams—and use that information to “notice patterns, make predictions, and uncover relationships.” 

Students can continually improve spatial thinking skills—and it’s worth the effort. In a 2025 study, Emily Farran, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Surrey, found that teacher-led spatial practice using a series of LEGO building tasks not only improved elementary school students’ spatial reasoning, but meaningfully boosted their math scores by two-thirds of a letter grade, compared to peers who didn’t receive the intervention. 

In school, concerted efforts to improve students’ spatial thinking builds their ability to “understand the spatial properties of objects, such as their size and location,” as well as the ability to “visualise and manipulate objects and problems in the mind,” Farran writes in TES magazine. In spite of robust research showing that improvements in spatial thinking can boost academic performance, Farran notes the findings “have yet to be translated into classroom practice” in many schools. 

From math to social studies and ELA, here are strategies for bringing spatial learning into everyday lessons in your classroom.

Manipulate 2D and 3D shapes: For early grade students, activities like a Cube Challenge can be especially powerful. Students use a fixed number of interlocking cubes to construct as many unique 3D figures as possible. “Starting with three cubes helps students get the idea,” Gunderson notes, “and making all the unique combinations of four cubes is a great challenge.” The task encourages flexible thinking, visualization, and persistence as children explore different configurations.

Spatial geometry: Challenging upper elementary and middle school students to grapple with 2D versus 3D shapes provides excellent spatial skill practice. This activity requires students to draw shapes on paper—a triangle, for example—predict how they’ll fold the shape, and then test those predictions by folding the paper into a 3D model. The reverse is also useful: ask students to imagine what shape they’d see if they sliced through a 3D solid and then sketch that cross-section. “Students often confuse surface features with cross-sections,” Gunderson says, pointing out that many assume the cross-section of a cylinder will always be round. 

Visualize with LEGOs: In Farran’s study, early elementary school students watched a short instructional video about how to read pictorial diagrams, and then followed directions independently to build LEGO models—objects like x-ray goggles and superhero suits. Teachers encouraged accuracy over speed, prompting students to visualize moves before placing pieces with cues like, “Can you turn the brick in your head to decide which way it should go?” and reinforcing spatial language such as rotate, flip, or place next to. Using pictorial guides instead of step-by-step directions pushed students to imagine how pieces fit together, strengthened their mental rotation skills, and expanded their math vocabulary. In your classroom, you might try providing students with pictorial guides to build structures out of LEGOs, blocks, or magnet tiles, challenge them to invent their own guides and structures, and encourage them to trade their directions with peers and see how effective they are. 

Map what you know: When early-elementary students sketch a familiar space, they’re learning to mentally rotate and scale objects, translate a 3D environment into a 2D representation, and use symbols to stand in for real-world features. Simple treasure hunts based on maps that students create of their school, classroom, or desks can strengthen orientation and perspective-taking skills, Gunderson notes. 

Invent a world: In Andrea Ketcham’s fifth-grade class in Eminence, Kentucky, students write stories about imaginary lands, then draw maps that bring those worlds to life, complete with compass roses, keys, scales, and physical features. They then trade maps and challenge classmates to navigate their imaginary world using grid points and directions. Instead of handing students a map of the world and saying locate a given point, or find the longitude and latitude of a point, Ketcham allows students to practice the same skills on maps created by peers by answering questions like “What continent is 50 degrees West and 70 degrees East?” By designing and decoding each other’s maps, students strengthen spatial reasoning—visualizing distance, scale, and orientation—while continuing to focus on literacy and social studies standards. 

Spatial picture books: Stories that track the movement of characters through different environments offer a straightforward way to introduce spatial vocabulary to young learners, says Ashley Lewis-Presser, a research scientist at the Education Development Center. Books like Piggies in the Pumpkin Patch by Mary Peterson and Jennifer Rofé reinforce terms such as over, under, around, and through, while titles like Julie Dillemuth’s Mapping My Day and Lucy in the City explicitly weave in maps and navigation. Pausing to ask questions—“Which way is the character moving? How far did they travel? What’s next to what?”—helps students practice words related to direction and distance. This precise language strengthens the vocabulary students draw on in math, science, and everyday problem solving. 

Plot the story: Middle school students can also practice spatial skills by mapping the settings of novels they’re reading, writes former educator Jenn Brisendine. Teachers can ask students to track a character’s journey, mark important landmarks, or plot routes between events in the story. For example, a class reading Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina might create a neighborhood map showing where key scenes in South Florida unfold, while The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman could inspire a map of the characters’ travels across Chennai, India. By plotting movements and locations, students build an awareness of scale, distance, and direction, while also deepening their comprehension of how setting shapes narrative. These activities can create a more “fulfilling reading experience” for students while also promoting spatial skills and flexible, creative thinking, Brisendine notes. 

Bring abstract concepts to life: Abstract mathematical concepts—like fractions or percentages—often trip early-grade students up, yet spatial exercises can make these concepts more tangible, Farran writes. For example, teachers can present students with different shapes and ask them to shade in one third or a half, comparing the difference to explain why ½ is greater than ⅓ or why ⅔ is greater than .50—connections that can help students transition to more symbolic and conceptual math and laying the foundation for algebra. To deepen the learning, Farran suggests prompting students with questions like, “How many different ways can you shade half of the shape? How will you know that you have shaded half?” This challenges students to visualize and represent part-whole relationships in multiple ways. 

Compare data representations: As students begin to evaluate charts and data sets in later grades, spatial skills help them visualize information across representations and make connections. For example, if the same dataset is represented as a table, a tally chart, and a bar graph, Farran suggests asking students to compare and contrast the various formats: “What is the same and what is different? Is one easier to understand? Why?” 

In her high school classroom, math teacher Jessica Thomas scales this up by creating a “Statistics Olympics” where students generate their own data through activities like a typing test to measure how many words they can generate in a minute or an online math facts quiz to see how many questions they can complete in a minute, then experiment with multiple ways to represent that data—through dot plots, histograms, box-and-whisker plots, for example. Thomas asks students to decide which graph best communicates the data and explain their reasoning. By evaluating how different graphs highlight different patterns, students not only deepen their statistical reasoning but also practice the kind of spatial flexibility that allows them to compare representations and choose the most effective one.