Page 144 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

116 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
distortions are inevitable, and most will be cleared up without great difficulty. Still, you should minimize such problems by screening historical fiction sources for authenticity and by helping your students understand the differences between fictional and historical representations (Levstik, 1989; VanSledright, 2002).
What children’s literature have you read that would work to teach historical content? How will you evaluate whether a book is worth using?
Using Timelines
Timelines are useful devices for helping students learn and remember landmark events in history. We recommend that at least one timeline be kept on permanent display in your classroom. You may be able to purchase commercially produced timelines suitable for use with your students, but if you teach in the primary grades, you might do better to develop your own timelines, preferably in collaboration with your students. We have seen the value of these “interactive” timelines in observing Barbara Knighton teach her elementary students.
Barbara introduces her students to timelines by creating a timeline of her own life. She brings to class a collection of artifacts (e.g., trophies and keepsakes from childhood and graduation and wedding photos), sequenced by age. Then she displays each of these artifacts (and adds simple drawings made quickly on the spot) during a lesson that high- lights her life to date. Subsequently she affixes these illustrations to a timeline that extends for several feet and is posted on a wall. As a follow-up, she assigns her students to develop their own personal timelines, working in collaboration with family members. At this point, they clearly understand that a timeline depicts significant events in the order in which they occurred.
Subsequently, when teaching the historical strands of her social studies units on cultural universals, Barbara develops additional timelines depicting key advances in each of these aspects of the human condition. Her timeline for the transportation unit, for example, depicts people walking and carrying or dragging items in the Long, Long Ago (cave days) section; people riding horses, carrying items in horse-drawn wagons, or using canoes or sailboats in the Long Ago (pioneer days) section; and trains, cars, trucks, and airplanes in the Modern Times section. Barbara’s homemade timelines are not drawn to scale and do not usually include specific dates, but they are well suited to the content taught at the grade level. Furthermore, they are used as teaching and learn- ing resources, not just displayed as decorations. Each artifact or drawing is used to illus- trate a big idea emphasized in teaching about historical developments, and the completed timeline serves as a resource to which Barbara can refer in her subsequent teaching and her students can refer as they work on assignments.
Another variation on the timeline is to combine a personal timeline with a timeline of significant events to situate one’s personal history in the grander historical narrative. For example students could determine what significant events were happening when their parents were born. We do not believe that students’ memorization of the years of significant events is as important as their understanding of the general chronology of when these events occurred and their knowledge of their personal histories in the context of larger historical narratives. See the following website for teaching ideas: teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/ teaching-guides/24347
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.