Toronto change and continuity
- 1. 1 Change and Continuity “Come on, Bart. History can be fun. It’s like an amusement park except instead of rides, you get to memorize dates.” —Marge Simpson in “Margical History Tour,” an episode of The Simpsons that aired on December 22, 2004
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- 3. 3 Human Timeline • Begin with events, then add dates, people and time periods. Ask them how they will represent periods or events that stretch over time such as residential schools. • Use cards, posters or tabards with visual images. • Finally, stick the whole thing on the wall (with blu- tack, so you can take it down and get them to do it again in a few weeks – "Oh look kids, the cleaners have taken down our timeline – we need to put it up again.”) (adapted from Ian Dawson, Thinking History)
- 4. 4 • If you have one big timeline, have students stand in a slight crescent so everyone can see everyone else. A straight line doesn’t work for visibility. • Try two timelines face to face so students can compare. • If you don’t have enough students in your class use chairs or stuffed toys to make up the numbers or to increase the length of the line if you venture back into time BCE.
- 5. 5 Options: focus on.. • chronological conventions such as BCE and CE or dates and centuries. e. g., 1867 is in the 19th century. • key elements of change and continuity, e.g., turning points, progress and decline, periodization • "big pictures" such as themes and narratives and all the complexities involved, e.g., the story of work, democracy, the Canadian national identity, human rights, etc. Emphasize interpretation and diversity. Return to and revise regularly.
- 6. 6 Make History Meaningful by Building Connections: Exploring Continuity and Change through Enhanced Timelines
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- 10. 10 Guideposts to Understanding Continuity and Change 1. Continuity and change are interwoven: both can exist together. Chronologies—the sequencing of events—can be a good starting point. 2. Change is a process, with varying paces and patterns. Turning points are moments when the process of change shifts in direction or pace. 3. Progress and decline are broad evaluations of change over time. Depending on the impacts of change, progress for one people may be decline for another. 4. Periodization helps us organize our thinking about continuity and change. It is a process of interpretation, by which we decide which events or developments constitute a period of history.
- 12. 12 Your Tasks (but for the first and last task, in whatever order suits you): • Choose a historical thinking concept and a unit of study (new or old). • Establish the big ideas, learning goals, and success criteria for the task/unit. • Create an essential question/inquiry question. • Decide on how students will demonstrate their learning. • Plan an introduction to the concept. • Outline subsequent activities. • Develop an assessment plan. • Report on your progress.
Editor's Notes
- #2: That history is just “memorizing dates” is the stereotypical bad rap history always gets. So a good first step in introducing continuity and change is to assure students that these concepts are not necessarily about memorizing dates of events but instead are about riding the roller coaster of history. It speeds up at times, slows down, goes over a precipice – but it never stops.
- #3: Putting events in chronological order is a staple of school history. One could not understand the story of World War I without being able to sequence accurately the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, the entry of the U.S., the exit of Russia, and the Treaty of Versailles. Dates are the key means by which we are able to order multiple events. So the chronology— especially in its expression as the timeline—can help students make sense of history, see connections, tell a story, find meaning. Despite the potential to make history more coherent, according to Levstik and Barton, timelines « typically connect one thing that students don’t know much about – dates – with something else they don’t know much about – wars and politics. » Too often they are inert illustrations to a textbook and little more.
- #4: If we want to build connections and a coherent mental picture for our students, why not start the year with a big picture timeline activity?
- #5: Take some photos of the timeline to illustrate your classroom wall timelines and build class spirit.
- #6: Remember when we looked at this period (refer to the image and label again), what can you remember about how people lived? Well we are now going to look at how women experienced the time. Is it the same?
- #7: So to make them meaningful, we want to expand the content to include both continuity and change, both politics and social history, and make them visual.
- #8: This grade 8 student’s timeline of 19th century Canada is more wide ranging: along the line are typical political events such as the War of 1812 and the assasination of D’Arcy McGee. The bottom row, however, are elements of social history such as large family size, the popularity of corsets, and the dominance of farming, social history that is often omitted because it is not tied to a single event but is nonetheless important. The unexamined timeline is not worth making. Ask questions about their timelines such as « What story does your timeline show? Why did you choose that event? Why haven’t you included…? That bunching up at that bit suggests speed! » A timeline should never be boring,… it should be a REVELATION. » Class time lines can give a purpose, a public audience much as Heritage Fairs do: If a student finds something at home that relates to history, invite them to add it to the line. A dynamic, messy, full-to-the-brim timeline is a sign of a class that’s engaged in history full-tilt. »
- #9: This shows a Heritage Fairs timeline for a project called « Explosions of Equality », a grade 7 student’s project on the history of feminism.
- #10: Heritage fair timelines
- #11: Understanding and communicating what happened in the huge, infinite past—across regions, across populations, and across centuries—requires vast simplification. The chronicle, a simple list of events in the chronological order in which they happened, is a starting point in making sense of the past. But it serves that function at the risk of conveying a notion of history as a series of discrete, even disconnected events or changes. It cannot illustrate change as a process that varies in both pace and direction. It fails to acknowledge the vast and multiple continuities that underlie change, and which contribute equally to the fabric of human experience. Before the introduction of historical thinking to a classroom, students may go no further in thinking about historical change than to ask, “When did it happen?” so that they can memorize the date for the unavoidable test. By teaching students how to think like an historian, we enable them to see change as a process that speeds up, slows down, and sometimes takes a turn. We encourage them to peek underneath examples of change to see the continuities that contribute just as much to the course of human history.