My First TimeToast

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This sequence has been designed to carry out with students in the 3rd year of compulsory secondary education during March to celebrate International Women’s Day. The sequence has a number of learning objectives. Firstly and most importantly, the main objective is to raise awareness about the lack of women in science and get students thinking about the reasons behind this. Besides that, students will develop their reading skills and learn how to use linking words and relative clauses. 

Timetoast is an excellent application for this because students will be able to see in a very visual way that there have been many important women in the field of Science over the years despite not receiving the same recognition that their male counterparts have got. Being able to visualise this will get students to reflect on the inequality women have suffered over the centuries and continue to suffer. What is more, the timelines can be easily printed off and displayed in the school to educate others about these women and give them the recognition they deserve. 

The pupils will start the sequence brainstorming female and male scientists, past and present to see how many they can come up with. It is likely they will think of more men than women. Here we can discuss why it might be that the class as a whole is aware of more male scientists than female ones. 

Following this, students will be asked to read this text after having already worked on reading strategies and vocabulary for its comprehension. The text will also be exploited to see elicit relative clauses and linking words which students will have to incorporate into the texts they’ll write on the timeline. 

Each group of four will have to find at least five more women to place on their timeline with a short summary of their life and their achievements in Science. Given that by this point the students will have worked linking words and relative clause, they will have to incorporate these things into the summaries. They must include a photo too. Here is an example that I have created.  Their Timeline will be evaluated using a rubric as part of their mark for written production. 

As a follow up activity, students will be asked to create a QR code for their timeline and a series of questions. Both the QR codes and the questions will be shared with the rest of the class. The students will access the Timelines by scanning the QR codes and looking for the answers to the prepared questions, in the style of a scavenger hunt. Using the new information they have, students will once more reflect on the reasons women were often omitted from history or not recognised for their achievements. 

The sequence created has been hypothetical given that time has not permitted me to carry this out with the pupils. Nevertheless, I can imagine that one of the issues kids might have is trying to edit the timeline at the same time. As far as I can see, the Timeline can only be edited on one device at any one time, unlike a Google document for example, so there might be times that some students are sitting with their arms crossed since this is a group work task. Another downside to this tool for me, was having to save all the images I wanted to use to the computer first rather than being able to copy and paste directly from the internet. 

Something I really liked about the tool was that my work was saved automatically. This will undoubtedly save disasters from happening in the class. I also found the app to be very intuitive so the students won’t need long explanations beforehand about how to use it. 

I can imagine my students would enjoy using this tool. At school we make a lot of infographics, posters and presentations so this is a new way for them to present information.

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2428626

Comments

  1. José LT17 December 2020 at 13:34

    Hello, my name is José López and I am a classmate of the English course.
    From my point of view, your blog has many positive characteristics and I really like the activities you have designed. By the way, the aesthetics of this one would be an aspect to highlight. I love the activities designed with EdPuzzle, it is very interesting to learn about the importance of English as an international language.
    Actually all the activities seem very nice to me, but I would like to provide a little advice in relation to your Time Toast called Women in Science. This activity is very interesting and necessary, but perhaps more modern women could also appear.
    Goodbye and keep designing activities this cool.

    ReplyDelete
  2. José LT17 December 2020 at 13:35

    Hello, my name is José López and I am a classmate of the English course.
    From my point of view, your blog has many positive characteristics and I really like the activities you have designed. By the way, the aesthetics of this one would be an aspect to highlight. I love the activities designed with EdPuzzle, it is very interesting to learn about the importance of English as an international language.
    Actually all the activities seem very nice to me, but I would like to provide a little advice in relation to your Time Toast called Women in Science. This activity is very interesting and necessary, but perhaps more modern women could also appear.
    Goodbye and keep designing activities this cool.

    ReplyDelete

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