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Personal timelines - periodizing history

Meaghan Mihalic

A fun way to start the discussion of time and scale in BHP is with the History of Me activity. I just wrapped this up with three of my four sections today, and we had some good discussions. When I asked students about who included things that were 100+ or 1,000+ years earlier, many students looked at my like I was nuts. It lead to a great discussion of how decisions by family members in our distant past have impacted who we are and were we live today. A quickwrite and discussion like this also bring to light that varying scales when looking at time can be beneficial to our overall understanding of events. It's the "in the weeds" versus "in the clouds" perspective to determine when it might be more appropriate to zoom in and/or out to better understand an event.

Next class, I'll continue with the idea of historical periodization with a personal timeline project. This is a favorite every year, mostly because they end up being highly visual, and students start to make connections with their peers as they look through the final products. Instead of having students plot individual events from their life, I ask them to review their History of Me quickwrite and reflect on turning points, milestones, and topics or themes which seem to come up frequently. From there, they come up with three eras or periods of their life. They adjust the size of the segments on the timeline to reflect the length of time, add images, captions, year ranges, and a heading.

The addition this year, is that I am going to print out speech bubbles. I'll place them on the wall surrounding the timelines. In the speech bubbles, I am going to have them write about a threshold moment that happened before they were born which impacted them. For example, neither of my parents are from California...they hailed from Nebraska and Illinois. However, they relocated to San Diego, and always tell me and my brother that when they saw they ocean, they never looked back. Therefore, this place they chose to call home, also became mine. I think having these threshold moments all around the room may be a good way to show that our histories and futures are impacted by events that took place before we existed! I'll follow up to add some images when I have them!

  • Update! I used the speech bubble idea today with a section, and the results were fantastic! I had students write about parents meeting, family members immigrating, a great-great-great (?) grandparent who survived the battle at the Alamo, the Big Bang, and the development of humans! Everyone seems to understand the idea that our timelines started in advance of our creation! I think it's a nice addition to thinking chronologically and also scale-switching. I'm including a photo so you can read some of their responses. (Hoping the quality is good enough to read!)

  •  I like your idea of reflecting on turning points or milestones in students' lives so they can identify eras or larger periods. This is a good analogy that can help students to understand this concept better. The use of speech bubbles is also a great recourse. In my case I passed this lesson but I can see its application later in the course. I am covering Threshold 4 and periodization is a big topic. 

  • in reply to Laura Massa

     I'm glad to hear the idea might be replicable or helpful to you! It was a nice add-on to the questions for the History of Me activity since one reflecting question is about events that occurred before they were born. I won't lie, it's been pretty fun to read some of these. I think at Back to School night, some of the parents and guardians will get in a good laugh!

  • Meaghan Mihalic said:
    The addition this year, is that I am going to print out speech bubbles. I'll place them on the wall surrounding the timelines. In the speech bubbles, I am going to have them write about a threshold moment that happened before they were born which impacted them

    What a great way to add in a threshold that happened before they were born! I always open this option up for students by saying that they could include a threshold or 2 before they were born if they would like to. Only a handful take me up on the offer though. I love the idea of having all of them go back and "revise" their history by adding speech bubbles to the timelines. I already did this activity for the year but I will totally be doing this next year! Or ... maybe when we bring up scale again I can have them go back!  

  • in reply to Meaghan Mihalic

    I like how you connected it to their personal lives. This will be a good reference point throughout the year and was a great way to get to know your students!.