In your Discovery Ed account, you have access to hundreds of audio recordings of famous, historical speeches. The beauty of these recordings is that they can easily be linked to Google Classroom to share with students.
Using Google Sites, create your own Choose Your Own Adventure to take students through the decisions that led to historical events.
Students will demonstrate their learning and understanding of history by creating an interactive timeline. Challenge students to work independently or in a small group in order to cover the period of time, details of a specific event, or the location you are currently studying. Check out this example of all the things your students could include to show their learning!
Students can include written details, pictures (copy the picture address from Google by right clicking), insert videos, and even create their own questions and discussions* (TIP: throw in some STAAR question stems for them to use to make it even better!).
*HEADS UP: 30 day free trial has all of these cool options. After 30 days, creative opportunities are limited to text and pictures. You can still manage students and they can still collaborate. While the free version doesn't have as many options, it still provides an opportunity for students to create a digital timeline so they get a better understanding of how the events worked together.
Storyboardthat.com allows students to create free comic strips to show the different events. It also features scenes, characters, and other graphics that are time period specific.
Lesson Example
TEKS 8.4: explain the issues surrounding important events of the American Revolution...
Lesson: Students chose 3 of the important events of the American Revolution. For each event, students created a cell on their comic strip to represent the event, and then they described the issues that affected the event.
Extension activity: Have students post their Storyboard in a shared Google Slide or in Classroom. Then students can view and comment on other comic strips about the important of that set of events, how the picture relates to the issues, or even what 4th event would best pair with the chosen events in the comic strip.
SLIDES EVENT COLLAGE
Working in Google Slides, students can create a college of their knowledge. In the example on the left, the student wrote about the fall of the Berlin wall, located Berlin on a map, inserted photographs from the wall, and inserted a video that covers the rise and fall of the wall. By bringing multiple media forms together, the student will gain an in-depth understanding of the event, its location, and why it was culturally relevant.