Timeline of Life

For one of my education classes at Wright state, I had to plan a lesson and film myself teaching it in my placement.  Our 7th graders are about to write memoirs right now so I decided to plan a lesson to help them brainstorm ideas for their papers.

I began class by drawing two columns on the board:  positive events & negative events.  Then I asked students to raise their hands and volunteer some answers.  After this I explained that they were going to track at least 10 events in the lives, positive and/or negative.  In their notebooks, I had students draw five columns with the following headings:  event, time/age, positive/negative, image, description.  After modeling how to fill out these columns, students began to fill out these columns for ten events.  Once they were done, I showed them how to take their information and create a timeline of the events.  I had created one over our multiple snow days to share :)

The students really seemed to enjoy reminiscing.  While grading these, I really learned more about each of my students.  My cooperating teacher and I decorated the room with all of their creations.  The picture above is part of an actual timeline one of my students created.