Creating family timelines: Graphing family memories and significant events
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=870
A lesson plan for grades 3–5 English Language Arts
In this lesson, students participate in read-alouds of books that focus on family memories. This lesson begins with the class sharing stories about their families. Then, after reading one of several books about family memories, students reflect on the memories presented by the stories and make connections with their own lives. The teacher demonstrates how to prepare a timeline by engaging students in an activity where they list events from the school year on a blank timeline. Working in small groups, students create visual representations for a selection of events on the timeline and add them to the example that the class has created. Using either the interactive graphic map, students will create their own positive-negative timeline using stories and events from their family. After students have brainstormed a list of questions to ask their family, they interview members of their family and create their own timelines with the answers. When students complete the activity, they share their timelines with the class. This lesson suggests several extension activities and provides many web resources for students to use to complete the project. Readwritethink provides a list of books to use with this lesson, sample interview questions, a rubric for project evaluation, and other online graphic organizers.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
English Language Arts (2004)
Grade 3
- Goal 2: The learner will apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing by:
- setting a purpose.
- previewing the text.
- making predictions.
- asking questions.
- locating information for specific purposes.
- making connections.
- using story structure and text organization to comprehend.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, or viewing by:
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.04: Use planning strategies (with assistance) to generate topics and to organize ideas (e.g., drawing, mapping, discussing, listing).
Grade 4
- Goal 2: The learner will apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
- setting a purpose using prior knowledge and text information.
- making predictions.
- formulating questions.
- locating relevant information.
- making connections with previous experiences, information, and ideas.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.05: Use planning strategies to generate topics and organize ideas (e.g., brainstorming, mapping, webbing, reading, discussion).
Grade 5
- Goal 2: The learner will apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
- making predictions.
- formulating questions.
- supporting answers from textual information, previous experience, and/or other sources.
- drawing on personal, literary, and cultural understandings.
- seeking additional information.
- making connections with previous experiences, information, and ideas.
- Objective 2.02: Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.05: Use a variety of preliminary strategies to plan and organize the writing and speaking task considering purpose, audience, and timeline.
