Term III Assignment

Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School

Student teachers:
Location:
Grade:
Duration:

Melina Varney and Kelsey Jurewicz

Penn Alexander School
First grade
50-60 minutes

Core Decisions

What
The primary curricular goal in this lesson is to teach the features of a timeline. In our
classrooms, students are briefly exposed to timelines during their study of Pilgrims, but this
exposure includes little explanation or context regarding what timelines are or why and how we
use them. In this lesson, we hope to provide students with the foundation they need to be able to
correctly read and interpret timelines, understand how to represent information on a timeline and
think critically about the selection of events on a timeline. Through their experience during this
lesson, students will address questions such as: Why do we make timelines? What makes an
event significant? Who gets to decide this? Can an event be significant or insignificant
depending on the purpose of a given timeline? Whose perspective are we using, and is it
reliable?
In addition to establishing a foundational understanding of timelines, our secondary
curricular goal for this lesson is to further contextualize the concept of timelines by establishing
an understanding of the relative magnitude of numbers. It is hard for children to understand what
it means when we say something happened twenty years ago versus 100 years ago versus 300
years ago. This lesson will allow students to grapple with the size of these numbers and then
relate this understanding to their developing concept of timelines with regard to how and where
events are placed, as well as what an events place on a timeline can tell us.
The activities in this lesson were chosen and ordered to give students an access point for
thinking about their own place in history and how their personal histories relate to history more
broadly. While this lesson would ideally be the introduction to a larger unit on timelines and
personal histories, time constraints necessitate that this stand-alone lesson serves as just a starting
point for digging into these essential questions, which students will hopefully continue to explore
throughout their elementary years.

How
Our Doing History textbook suggests using students personal histories as an entry point
into history more broadly. In this lesson, we seek to use this method, alongside instruction and
practice with the skill of reading and constructing timelines, to introduce our students to the
concept of history. The lesson will begin by asking students what history is. In order to make our
conversation visible, students will be introduced to the features and uses of timelines. We will
share our own histories through personal autobiographies to begin the conversation from a
common source. After modeling how to evaluate the significance of events from our personal
autobiographies and selecting events for inclusion on the timeline, we will ask students to do the
same. From this point on, the lesson will be largely student-led. Students will be responsible for

describing their personal historic events, placing them on the timeline and justifying their
decisions. Our role as the instructors will be to facilitate discussion between students and ask
pointed questions to get students thinking. Our hope is that having students select important
events from their own lives to be placed on the timeline will help them begin to recognize that
their own experiences have a place in history.
Well also introduce the concept of long ago history by asking students where we
should place the First Thanksgiving on our timeline. In order to do this, students will need to
apply their knowledge of timelines and their understanding of the progression of time. Well help
students comprehend the difference between an event that happened ten years ago versus an
event that happened 100 years ago by comparing piles of cotton balls (1 cotton ball represents 1
year). We will begin with a common event, such as having one cotton ball represents how long
ago they started school as kindergartners. Then, students will help us make piles to represent
how long ago they were born and how long ago we were born. Finally, well ask students how
big they think the pile will be to represent how long ago the First Thanksgiving was. Students
will have the opportunity to count out some of the 392 cotton balls to allow them to be part of the
process and also to further solidify the magnitude of time between now and the First
Thanksgiving.
Through experience constructing a joint timeline and working with manipulatives that
symbolize periods of time represented on a timeline, we hope to deepen students understanding
beyond that of simply being able to read a timeline. The activities in this lesson are structured to
help students use the timeline as a tool to make connections between their own lives, the lives of
others, things that are happening in the world and things that happened long ago.

Why
The majority of the social studies instruction our students have received this school year
has focused on the ideas of rules and good citizenship. Although students have been exposed to a
few major players in history, including Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims, context and
scaffolding have been absent. Students have had little opportunity to engage with history or
consider their own role in it. In class, students are currently learning about the First
Thanksgiving from the perspective of the Pilgrims, so we also wanted to briefly mention the
concept of reliability of sources and multiple perspectives. In order to do this, we will give
students an alternative narrative to one of their own experiences and pose the question whose
version is correct? We will then explicitly make the connection between this conversation and
the reliability and perspective of historical accounts in fiction and nonfiction texts. Hopefully this
will lay the foundation for students to be critical consumers of information.
The goals of this lesson are aligned with several National Council for the Social Studies
standards under the heading Time, Continuity, and Change. We want to give students
experience with sequencing by putting their own experiences into chronological order and fitting
them within those of their classmates, as well as local and world events. We also wanted to make
the story of the First Thanksgiving more accessible to students by placing it on the same timeline
and explicitly talking about the place of each event in history. Ideally, this lesson would be the
first of several, but we hope to build a basic foundation of skills that can refer back to when
thinking about history later on. This lesson also incorporates several Common Core literacy
standards, including recalling information from experiences, participating in collaborative
conversations with peers and adults in small groups, and describing events with relevant details.
We believe that history is more meaningful for students when they have the opportunity
to relate their own experiences to historical events. Before they can do this, however, students

need to understand their own role in history. Our goal is that, through this lesson, students will
begin to uncover answers to these big questions.

Lesson Design

Goals & Objectives

Essential questions
1. What is our place in history?
2. What is the relationship between our personal histories and history more broadly?
Content objectives
1. Students will identify important experiences from their own lives and accurately
construct a group timeline using each students personal events.
2. Students will evaluate the significance of events and justify their thinking.
3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of history by accurately placing events from
the First Thanksgiving on the timeline.
Social Studies practice objectives
1. Students will evaluate their role in history and recognize the connection between historic
events and their own lives.
2. Students will critique the reliability of sources.

Standards
Social Studies
National Council for the Social Studies -- Time, Continuity, and Change
Provide learners experience with sequencing to help establish a sense of order and time
Make stories of the recent past as well as of long ago available to learners
Help learners recognize that individuals may hold different views about the past
Lay the foundation for the development of historical knowledge, skills, and values
Literacy
ELA Common Core State Standards
1.W.8 With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or
gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
1.SL.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1
topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
1.SL.4 Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas
and feelings clearly.

Materials and preparation

Instructor Needs
expectations anchor chart
whiteboard
dry-erase markers and eraser
autobiography
class timeline--tape, sharpie, large piece of paper
various colored index cards
Each student needs
pencils & erasers
events from their personal histories
3-5 index cards
exit slip

Classroom arrangement and management issues

Location
This lesson will be conducted in one of the small conference rooms at Penn Alexander. The
room contains one small circular table with room for about six students. Around the perimeter of
the room are several armchairs where my Penn Mentor and/or observing classmate will sit during
the lesson. There is a counter behind the circular table where the behavior anchor chart, white
board and materials will be arranged. The room has a blank wall on which the group timeline
will be set up. When we enter the room, I will ask each student to take a seat at the table. The
students will remain in these seats for the duration of the lesson, getting up occasionally to place
events on the timeline. In choosing where to conduct my lesson, this room seemed to be the
obvious choice. It has many affordances, including privacy, limited distractions, proximity to our
classroom and adequate seating space, which neither the hallway nor the classroom would have
provided.
Materials
Since this lesson primarily involves whole group work and discussion, students will be handed
materials as needed. The base structure of the class timeline will be set up when students arrive,
and all other materials will be arranged on the counter, where they will stay until needed.
Management
I dont foresee major management issues. For most of this lesson, the whole group will be
working together, which will avoid issues of students finishing at different times. Students do not
have much experience engaging in discussions with one another, so expectations for this will be
established at the start of the lesson. Students may get excited to be outside of their usual
classroom and be more likely to talk and play around, but again, setting explicit instructions at
the beginning and reinforcing them throughout the lesson should mitigate these issues.

Plan
Task (50-60 min)
Students will evaluate their own place in history by constructing a group timeline of student and
instructor experiences, local and world events from within their lifetimes, and familiar historical
events, with a particular emphasis on the First Thanksgiving.
Before task
A letter was sent home to students families asking them to help students identify 3-5 important
events from their lives to use for an in-school project.
Hook (10 min)
1. Establish norms
2. Introduce history -- What is history? and tell students well be sharing our own
histories
3. Introduce concept of timeline
a. How do we record historic events?
b. Draw blank timeline on board & connect to number line, establish basic features
like smaller numbers are on left (past) and bigger numbers are toward the right
(present), talk about how there isnt an end point
Body (30-40 min)
1. Introduce personal histories through instructors autobiography
a. Connect the construction of the autobiography to the work that historians do (and
the work the students did) in selecting which events are important and how the
events are described and recorded
b. Read text to students, including both significant and insignificant events
c. Model the process of differentiating between important and unimportant events
and placing it on the timeline
d. Allow students to help select events for inclusion and decide where they should
be placed (index card color 1)
2. Placing students personal events on timeline (index card color 2)
a. Students will be given 3-5 index cards on which to transfer their events
b. Each student will have the opportunity to share his/her events, describe why they
were chosen, and place them on the timeline
c. Other students will have the opportunity to make connections (e.g., if more than
one student wrote the first day of 1st grade, they would be asked to put up their
cards together)
3. Debrief -- talk about what kinds of events were chosen, how students chose, if it was a
hard decision, etc.
4. Placing students histories in the context of local and world events (index card color 3)
a. Introduce index cards with local and world events written on them, pose question
Can we put these on the same timeline?
b. Instructor places several events with help from students
5. Understanding long ago history in relation to timeline
a. Ask students where we would put the First Thanksgiving, place just to the left of
the first date and ask if thats where it should be
6

b. Cotton ball activity -- tell students 1 cotton ball represents 1 year, put one cotton
ball in a pile and say This is how long ago you started school, how many do I
need to show how many years ago you were born? add five cotton balls to the
pile, make a second pile with 25 cotton balls to show how many years ago I was
born, then ask how many we would need to show how long ago the First
Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1623, have students each count out 50 cotton
balls (Ill have the rest pre-counted), put all the cotton balls in one pile
c. Return to timeline and ask again Where should we put the First Thanksgiving?
6. Critique reliability of sources
a. Ask one student to describe their first day of first grade, instructor will provide an
alternative to that students description and ask, Whos right? Which one is
true?
b. Connect to history broadly, and the First Thanksgiving specifically, in that
different people have different stories depending on their point of view
Close (10 min)
1. Return to essential questions
2. Closing discussion about timeline, ask students about patterns, what sticks out to them,
and final thoughts
3. Exit slip: provide students with a pre-constructed timeline with several mistakes, have
students correct mistakes and justify their decisions

Assessment of goals/objectives
Placement of personal events on timeline
Participation in whole group discussion
Exit slip--finding mistakes on sample timeline
I will be conducting informal formative assessments throughout the lesson to ascertain how well
students are understanding the content. Students will be asked to explain and justify their
decisions in selecting personal events and determining where to place them on the timeline.
Students will also be expected to participate in whole group discussions about what history is
and where we fit into it. If students are not engaging, it will provide useful feedback for me that
they may need more scaffolding. Finally, as a more formal assessment, students will complete an
exit slip on which they will have to find mistakes and explain what is wrong and/or how to fix it.
This will let me know if they understand the basic features of a timeline, like chronological
order, as well as whether they understand how to evaluate the significance of events.

Anticipating students responses and your possible responses

Response to content of the lesson
Scenario 1: Students are having difficulty placing events on the timeline.
Response: Emphasize the connection between a timeline and a number line. Use smaller
numbers (less than 20) to make the idea more accessible before relating it back to the
dates on the timeline. Model placing an event on a timeline, using a thinking-out-loud
approach to show students how I am thinking about where to place the event.
Scenario 2: A student has difficulty grasping what makes an event significant, insists that
a trivial event should be included on the timeline.

Response: Probe the students thinking by asking questions that require them to justify
their opinion. Help the student to come to the conclusion on their own by using questions
that compare the frequency, impact and long-term effects of a significant event (ex. date
of birth) to the proposed insignificant event (ex. brushing their hair this morning).
Management issues
Scenario 1: Students are being silly, purposely placing events in obviously wrong spots
on the timeline to make other students laugh.
Response: Ask another student to help place the event in a more appropriate spot to give
attention to those students who are doing the right thing. If the problem persists, tell the
first student(s) that they wont have the opportunity to share their events and re-establish
norms on anchor chart.
Scenario 2: Students disagree, and argue, over the inclusion of an event on a timeline
and/or where a student places an event on the timeline.
Response: Allow students the chance to defend their stance. Guide students to come to a
consensus, keeping in mind that there may not be one. Remind students of the role that
multiple perspectives may play in selecting which events to include on the timeline.

Accommodations
For students who find the material too challenging
Students may have a difficult time understanding the features of a timeline. The years will be
pre-written for the span of their lifetimes to get them initially more comfortable with placing
events. Additionally, students will only be expected to place their events within the correct year,
not ordered by month or day. There will be a lot of modeling and scaffolding involved with this
activity.
Students may also have a hard time conceptualizing the difference between something that
occurred a decade before they were born and something that occurred centuries before their
birth. Hopefully, the inclusion of important events in my life will give them a frame of reference
in comparison to their own. Also, the cotton ball activity should help them visualize more clearly
the span of time between different points in history.
For students who need greater challenge and/or finish early
This activity is almost entirely whole group instruction, so students wont finish before their
peers. If they seem to have a strong conceptual understanding of timelines, I may ask them to
further order events within a year by month or day. Also, I can have them model for the other
students where to place other historic events. A huge part of the lesson is getting to know one
anothers personal histories and engaging with the concept of history, so students shouldnt need
too much additional challenge.

Letter to parents
Dear Parents and Guardians,
In the upcoming weeks, we will be learning about timelines in class. I am asking that your
student bring in a list of five personal events that can be included on the timeline. Examples may
include their date of birth, the birth of a sibling, the adoption of a pet or a particularly memorable
experience. Each event should include a date so that we will know where to place it on the
timeline. Please return this list by Wednesday, November 25th.
Thank you,
Ms. Jurewicz/Varney