Timelines of the Civil War

Recently doing Inquiry we have been focusing on timelines. Talking about how timelines can be used for a persons life span, wars, specific battles, certain eras, a presidency etc. We created as a whole group a big timeline of my life. This was very fun for students to make events in my life, they thought it was funny and made up I would have 12 kids but, this was memorable and they did understand.

Then we did a timeline in groups for the Civil War. For when it first started and when it ended.
I used sticky tape and made loops and connected them to show that the timeline is a sequence of events that happens. Then on the loops I tried to make the loops even when I  spaced the dates out. Then i hung the events from a piece of string to show where they fell on the timeline. Students in small groups collaborated together and put the same dates in order. Then after each group put the dates in order we discussed as a group and put my sticky tape timeline together! We then discussed some of the events and why they would be on the timeline and why they are important!

After we practiced timelines and discussed what they are used for I had each person choose a person during the civil war, it could be Abraham Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, a slave, a union solider, plantation owner and so on. The person my students were choosing would then be used for our final project which is creating a book from the perspective of that person. So students choose their person and began researching them and creating a timeline. Once students created a hard copy of their timeline we then created a virtual timeline on the website timetoast.com Timetoast is so great because you can research about any timeline because people make timelines and then make them public, but you could also create a timeline. So my stuents created their own timeline of the person. I wanted them to know how to draw the line and space out the dates so I had them do a hard copy then get the practice with timetoast. Once everyone finished their timelines on timetoast we presented them to the class to share information about each person. This was such a GREAT learning experience for students! :)