Having A Sweet Time"line"

 

I have been blessed with the opportunity to have a career in teaching :) Currently I teach third grade, and I also did my student teaching in a third grade classroom. Next year will be my second year of teaching which seems insane! It really does not seem like I could have survived ;) my first year yet haha. Teaching is the most difficult, hectic, challenging, wonderful, fulfilling, rewarding thing in the world.

With that I would like to present to you my first teaching post :) When trying to decide where to even start I decided why not at the beginning...kinda. I have had so many opportunities to be in various classrooms, but student teaching as many of you know, is the first chance to feel like you have you are a real educator. So, student teaching it is. For third grade, at least in the state I live, one of the social studies standards is all about learning how to interpret, and create timelines. When student teaching I thought ahhhh! How am I going to make timelines exciting?? Luckily, I had the most incredible mentor teacher there is, and she helped me come up with some sweet ideas!!( Literally, I cannot sing her praises enough, and am so thankful for the amazing staff who accepted me so graciously and helped me through every aspect of student teaching, and still support me- I miss you all so much!!!) Wanting to make the learning relate to the student's interest we thought well, what do kids like...candy! I also did a toy timeline activity I will have to find and post at a later date.

For my Having A Sweet Time"line" lesson the students were presented with a list of popular candies, and the dates they were created with facts about each product in a random date order. The students task was to assemble a timeline in chronological order using these dates. This project was at the beginning of our timeline unit so served as quite the informal assessment of whether the students knew basic chronological order/ had been comprehending the basic intro to timeline lessons we did a few days ago.

Here are the finished products :)

 If I were to do this project again I would think of a better way to display it lol. It ended up looking kinda wonky in the hallway because they were so long they could not all fit on our one bulletin board and the bricks did not want to let any type of adhesive stick to them. I would also have the students assemble the strips of cardboard (I did it all by myself and it took a longgg time).

 As more of an extension activity I would love for students to cut out colored pictures of candies and then look up the dates they were created and use   them as more personalized timelines.

Overall the kids enjoyed making their timelines, and the objectives were met. The students even surprised me quizzing their friends by asking them questions such as how many years after Reese cups were invented did someone invent m&ms? It was great to see them pose questions similar to the ones I had been asking them in class! I hope you enjoy this sweet little project :)