Travel in a Time-Machine Tunnel

1. Provide students with the opportunity to investigate several significant historical events, from their home country, or international events. There may be a theme to the investigation, such as the development of space flight, farming improvments, or advancements in technology. Once research is complete, students draw a long straight line on a safe place on the sidewalk or school playground with Crayola 3-D Sidewalk Chalk.
2. Use another color to mark one end of the line for today’s date. Mark the other end for a period of time that you want to go back to, such as 1776, 1861, or other significant dates in national or world history.
3. Add important events that happened on and between the two dates. Place each event approximately where it fits on the timeline. Mark as many events as you can with the Sidewalk Chalk Tools! Put on the 3-D glasses to see the timeline pop up from the sidewalk.
4. With a few classmates, travel through time. Start at today and tell something about the most current event. Then move to the next date. Keep moving back in time until you get to an event that you can’t describe. Stand there.
5. Play continues with the next player, who must state something different about events than previous players said. The first player to reach the beginning of the timeline becomes the history king/queen for that game!

LA: Read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

MATH: Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Use appropriate resources, data sources, and geographic tools to generate, manipulate, and interpret information.

SS: Identify and use various sources for reconstructing the past, such as documents, letters, diaries, maps, textbooks, photos, and others.

SS: Identify and describe examples in which science and technology have changed the lives of people, such as in homemaking, childcare, work, transportation, and communication.

VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.

VA: Select and use the qualities of structures and functions of art to improve communication of ideas.

VA: Use subjects, themes, and symbols that demonstrate knowledge of contexts, values, and aesthetics that communicate intended meaning in artworks.

VA: Analyze, describe, and demonstrate how factors of time and place influence visual characteristics that give meaning and value to a work of art.

Invite a local travel agent to meet with the class to discuss how a travel tour is developed and the budget for the travel is calculated. Prior to the meeting, students create questions for the guest, After the visit, students post learning to a class blog.

Students work in small groups to plan their trip. Research each major stop, including significant data about the location (population, etc.), cultural significance, landforms, architectural sites, etc. Students create a brochure advertising the trip to classmates. Include persuasive writing in the brochure to assist with convincing classmates to participate. Create a separate tour budget for the trip. What will you include?

Students work in groups to create an advertising brochure for their hometown, attempting to attract tourists. Include persuasive writing in the brochure to assist with convincing people to learn about your hometown.

Display tour brochures and budgets in a "Traveling in Style" exhibit. Invite parents to view the display and write comments about the work using small sticky notes. Post these around the children's work.