Activity: Important women in history. A timeline.

 This is an example of a timeline made by some of my students in C1.1. level. It is about Emmeline Pankhurst's life and fight for women's rights: https://www.timetoast.com/v/25a648e6-6f1e-47de-b59b-78545257101a

Reflection about the activity.

1. Learning objectives.

1.1. Getting familiar with events in the life of important women in history.

1.2. Revising the use of narrative tenses to talk about past events: past simple and past continuous.

2. The steps followed to set up the activity.

I divided the group of C1.1. into 3 groups  of  3 students each. I gave every group one different text about an important woman in history: Emmeline Pankhurst, Diana of Wales and Fatima al-Fihri. Then I asked two members of the group to underline the historical events in the life of the woman whose life was present in their text. Later, I asked them to explain those events to the third member of the group. That person should add those events to the timeline created with Timetoast on a mobile phone. Finally, when they finish doing their task, they should upload their timeline to their group google classroom platform and one member of the group should explain the most important events in the life of that woman to the rest of students in the classroom.

3. Any problems and how we solved them.

Some of my students and me were afraid of the use that the website Timetoast can make of the students' private email. I offered them to do the timeline with Timetoast with my teacher's account on the school digital board. I also thought about offering my students the possibilty to use a cardboard and markers to make a timeline in class in future activities. Finally, the free version of Timetoast just allows to add a specific number of entries to the timeline. If you need more, you have to decide which historical events are more important to be inserted in the timeline.

4. The students reaction to the use of Timetoast.

They relly liked using Timetoast in the different groups and exchanging ideas with their group members.

5. At least 3 ways that the use of Timetoast helped you achieve your learning objectives.

- The students compared the uses of verb forms in past simple, past continuous and past perfect to establish which event took place before others.

- The students learnt about the historical events in some women's lives by reading about them.

- They also learnt by listening to their classmates explanations.

 

 Reflection about reading habits

When I was a child and a teenager I used to read comics based on traditional adventure novels. My parents used to buy me some of them. I also read some comics and novels that my elder cousins had in their houses. By reading those adventure comics and novels I could live different adventures in other countries and I could learn about new cultures. At primary school a teacher asked a friend of mine and me to help him organise the school library and I found some tales that I really liked. I can also remember some of the tales that my mum and my maternal grandmother used to tell me when I was a child. At that time I was able to realise that my mum changed some details of the tales every time she told me each tale.

Nowadays I prefer reading articles in English, French and Spanish online. I also like reading traditional magazines and books in English, French and Spanish. When I was younger, I didn't like reading books as a compulsory reader. Besides, I didn't like having to take an exam about the novels I had read before.