Illustrative Timelines
My School, My Museum
4th Grade | November | Social Studies + ELA + Visual Arts
Teachers, staff, and museum educators collaborated to create a day of learning that focused on three areas: Social Studies (change over time, Western expansion, and Native American history), Reading (comparing and contrasting), and Visual Art (analyzing the message through visual clues). It was an action packed day with so many takeaways! AND ... the teachers worked with the students to create timelines that were displayed in each classroom and will be added to throughout the year.
To learn more about the program: My School, My Museum, click HERE.
Check out the lesson plan to get a feel for class visit to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Click to expand OR right click and "open image in a new tab"
2019.11_4th_Grade Lesson Plan-Connecting to History through Art.pdfThe Artworks
Portraits by Charles Bird King
(L to R) John Ridge (1825) and Shaumonekusse, Oto Half Chief, Husband of Eagle of Delight (ca. 1822)
Click on an image to see that artwork on the Crystal Bridges website
Thomas Moran's Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn (ca. 1862)
Jasper Francis Cropsey's The Backwoods of America (1858)
George Wesley Bellows's Cliff Dwellers (1913)
In the Classroom
Teachers, Megan Rozzana and Lainie Adams, started out the morning by reviewing the artworks and history that had already been covered in class. They also introduced (and added to the timeline) events and artworks that the students were about to study.
To reinforce the concept of a timeline and continue the discussion of change over time, students added themselves and their teachers to the timeline by writing their names and the day they were born on sticky notes.
Megan Rozzana introduces events for the timeline.
Lainie Adams adds the events to the timeline.
Students decorate sticky notes for the timeline.
Below you will find images of the completed timeline. The third image shows the days of birth of the students and teachers.
Conversations with Works of Art
Students participated in discussions about the art and artworks in the galleries. Educators moved the conversation to include vocabulary that the students learned in the classroom.
Arts Integration Coordinator, Alyssa Wilson, facilitates a discussion of the Charles Bird King portraits encouraging students to explore difficult but important topics such as assimilation, the Indian Removal Act, and the Trail of Tears.
As part of the Charles Bird King stop, students formed groups and adopted a point of view that they discussed and then shared with the rest of their class. See handout below. Note: This activity was inspired by "Circle of Viewpoints," a routine by Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero--find out more by clicking this link: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/resources/circle-of-viewpoints .
circle of viewpoints.pdf
School Programs Manager, Sally Ball, and Museum Educator, Travis Deal, facilitated conversations about westward expansion and the changes over time that occurred to the landscape. See below for the Venn Diagram handout that helped students to compare and contrast the landscapes and notice the change over time.
3 part Venn Diagram.pdf
Art Project: Making Timelines / Comic Strips
After lunch, students returned to the classroom and worked on visual timelines. Students were asked to select events and draw images of the events that documented the change over time.
Timeline and Comic Strip.pdf
