The specificity of geography lessons as a school subject lies in the fact that a necessary condition for its successful assimilation is the ability to use various sources of information to obtain geographical knowledge, and one of the first in the list of such sources is a geographical map. Today, general geographic maps are among the main types of cartographic products that determine the accuracy and modernity of small-scale general geographic and thematic maps. The problem of student-centered learning is extremely relevant for modern pedagogy. Working with geographical maps replaces the direct study of countries and other territories on the surface of the Earth by students, helps them to recreate the image of the studied territories with their main characteristic features. Analyzing the content of the cards and comparing them, students use and develop techniques of logical speech and spatial figurative thinking: they establish connections between phenomena, make comparisons, identify cause-and-effect relationships, bring common concepts under common ones, generalize, etc. Most of the independent work of students at school, including creative ones, is based on maps. Geographic maps help to connect learning with life, for example, in the form of compiling local history maps, maintaining a "duty map" of one's republic or the world. One of the necessary skills that needs to be trained and developed in a young graduate is systemic thinking, which means the practice of conscious thinking in understanding and implementing the connection between the constituent parts of a concept, process, phenomenon, system. Teaching aids are created taking into account the goals of geographical education, its content, as well as modern requirements for methods of teaching geography. They should be adapted to the characteristics of the activities of students and teachers and contribute to the best mastery of knowledge and skills with the least expenditure of time and energy. It is advisable to base the classification of teaching aids on the principle of grouping them according to the method of depicting geographical objects and phenomena, since the subject of school geography is the study of real objects and phenomena and spatial-territorial systems. Teaching tools in the framework of the study of geography contribute to the formation of specific ideas and scientific geographical concepts about natural and economic objects and phenomena. One of them is the description and depiction of objects and phenomena by conditional means (words, signs, numbers): a) verbal (textbooks, reference books, notebooks on a printed basis, text tables, anthologies); b) cartographic aids (wall, table and contour maps, chart maps, etc.); c) graphical schematic aids (structural and classification schemes, schemes of connections and interrelations of natural and economic objects and phenomena). The teaching aids of this group serve the purposes of forming geographical representations, revealing the essence and structure of objects and phenomena, the features of their spatial and territorial distribution; they help the assimilation of theoretical knowledge.