There is a lot to be done in the first few days of school.  Contact information needs to be collected, schedules need to be ironed out, and procedures need to be learned.  It’s common to spend a few days on non-sequitor “back to school” lessons before diving into the “real” curriculum.

I developed this particular lesson plan for the second or third day back at school.  I used it in a US I course, but it could be easily adapted to US II or World History.  The driving concept behind the lesson is that students don’t like the idea of memorizing lots of dates, but they need to have a relative idea of when things happened.  Solution?  Create a short timeline (10-12 major dates) within which students can organize events they learn later.

There are a few objectives to this lesson.  In terms of content, they will be able to identify major events in history (specific to your course content).  The major focus of the lesson, though, is on skills.  Students will learn to navigate their textbook, they will practice working in groups, and they will practice building a timeline.

As a Do Now, I asked my students to write down a few birthdays (I specified their birthday, a parent’s birthday, and a sibling’s birthday).  The point was to show them that they are perfectly capable of remembering a handful of dates, and that they do so on a daily basis.

Next, a brief introduction will segue into the major activity.  Explain that the students might not be required to remember every major date in history, but they should be able to place events in a relative time period.  To that end, they’ll be building a timeline with major events that they will encounter later the course of study.  The teacher should choose 10-12 dates to put on the board.  For US I, I chose 1492 (Columbus), 1607 (Jamestown), 1776 (Independence), 1800 (Jefferson’s election), 1828 (Jackson’s election), 1861 (Civil War), 1876 (Tilden-Hayes Election), 1898 (Spanish American War), 1914 (WW I), and 1939 (WW II).

First, ask the students if they can identify any of these dates based on prior knowledge.  Collectively identify one or two events and write them on the board.  Then, instruct the students to get into small groups (no more than 3 people), grab a textbook, and use the table of contents to identify the remaining events.

Once the students have identified all of the dates (or a majority of the groups have finished), come together as a class and complete the timeline on the board.  Briefly explain the significance of each event after it is identified and written on the board.

As a recap, tell students some other major events and the dates they happened.  Then ask in which time period (between which two events) that event took place.

You’ll need to tailor this somewhat to your class.  My students had almost no prior knowledge and they were not adept at navigating the textbook, so it took them 15-20 minutes to complete the timeline.  A better prepared class could probably complete the activity in 5-10 minutes.

For this type of class, you could add one or two steps.  One suggestion would be to have them go back, read the textbook section on one event or two events (depending on time), and write a short summary of what happened.  Then, while constructing the timeline on the board, groups can report out any summaries they wrote instead of having the teacher dictate the summary/importance.

Alternatively, you could assign one or two dates to each group (so that every date is represented).  In addition to writing a summary of the event that they have been assigned, the group should draw a picture representing the event.  Then, all of the pictures can be posted around the room (with the date of the event) to create a visual timeline.  This might be more time consuming, though, and lend itself to a two day lesson or a block schedule.

Many of our students are lacking in historical literacy, and this type of introductory activity is a great way to build a framework on which later knowledge can be organized.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Lesson Plans, Resources, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.