Reading and actually using maps and plans in everyday situations is still causing difficulties to a number of adults. Elementary education has not adewuately taken are of the training in these abilities as it should normally have done. The present contribution wishes to show that research in the didactic of mathematics has developed concepts and tools that allow: – to create favourable conditions for the observation and analysis of these difficulties in the school context. – to conceive, experiment on and analyse a training process for CE2 (9 year old) pupils, following which these pupils get the ability firstly to orient a plan correctly and locate themselves in an ill-known environment and secondly to formulate a procedure adapted to a given objective. We analyse the problems to be solved in the elaboration of a-didactiques situations simulating conditions in which the use and orientation of a plan is required. We describe briefly the didactic situations that can be constructed from them. We expose the outcome of their practice in a CE2 classroom of the Centre pour l’Observation et la Recherche sur l’Enseignement des Mathematiques de Talence (COREM). We show the evolution in pupil behaviour and along which sequence of interactions they overcome the difficulties they meet. We discuss the limitations of our work and the improvements required before this training can be included in teaching practices.