5th Grade Goes Back in Time

5th grade  students were given the opportunity to not only read about the Civil War, but experience it visually through creation. Stephanie Shatt had her students use Timetoast.com to create digital timelines. Timetoast made this learning fun while allowing for collaboration and sharing of ideas. Aidan Johnson, Caden Bogan, Harliegh Schnieder, and Ashton Dauphinais not only created great timelines, but came away from the lesson with a deep knowledge of how The Civil War came about.  

Students used their NISD school email addresses to set up a free account and learned to pull information from a variety of sources such as Google research, news journals, and textbooks.  The best aspect of this platform was that students got to customize the timeline in a way that was both visually appealing and informative.  According to the students, "This project was fun" and "we learned a lot from looking at our friend's timelines."  Time toast allows for students to comment on each other’s timeline as a way of giving feedback and learning from one another. Once the timelines were published, they could be shared with anyone in the district, state, or globe, which makes possibilities endless. 

Student Created Timeline:http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-events-that-led-up-to-the-civil-war-6787074d-f4d2-49c2-85b7-326d98848846