Teaching History Through Genealogy
A project designed to bring student & family into connection with community.
Teachers Page
A webquest designed for K-12 to use as project based learning involving Language Arts & Social Studies. By Susan Scheen, scheen@tds.net
This lesson is one of a series of lessons based on connecting students with their families history, culture, and the environment of that time period.
This lesson will teach the student to make a personal timeline of significant events from their life and their families history including historical and cultural monents from that time period.
The Process
Activities
1. Give each student a timeline divided into yearly segments starting with the year of birth.
2. Have them fill in important events in their life.
3. Give them a list of significant events to fill in from the world at large.
Create a Personal Timeline
1. Write your full name and date of birth on top left hand side.
2. Directly underneath write your fathers full name and his age at time of your birth.
3. On the next line write your mother's full name (including her maiden name) and her age at time of your birth.
4. On the lines under your parents names, write the names of your siblings (your brothers & sister) that are older than you and their ages at the time of your birth. (You will fill in later the names of brothers and sisters that were born after you. That means the ones that are younger than you.)
5. Write on small sheets of paper or index cards significant & interesting events that happened to you. You may include pictures you draw or photos from home. Also, include important things that happened in your family, including births & deaths of relatives. This is a good place to record major illness', vacations, and when you met a new friend.
6. Record on your timeline cultural or historical events that happened in the world during your lifetime. (Your teacher may have a list already prepared for you.)
Variations
How complicated your timeline is and how much you put on it will depend upon your age group. Adding events such as famines, wars, government influences can help the student to understand the effects on the family and the family happenings.
A focus on inventions prior to a time period will help to show their effect on the type of war, the influence of communications, the reason for people changing locations, etc.
Evaluation
To complete this webquest, you need a finished timeline with personal information and infromation about things that were happening in the world.
Resources Needed
You will need to have family information ahead of the lesson. For those that do not have anything you can still add the current events information and approximate information about when they learned to walk, started school, etc.
Conculusion
Now that your personal time line is finished, you may want to keep it in your book of memories, or add more family stories and pictures. Have Fun!