Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)
Lesson Idea Name: BUILD Your Own Timeline
Content Area/Grade(s): 3-5
Content Standard Summarized: Students will be able to use bubbl.us to create a timeline of events of a
specific era.
Technology Standard Addressed: ISTE Standard 3c: Students curate information from digital resources using
a variety of tools and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or
conclusions
Selected Technology Tool: bubbl.us
URL(s) to support the lesson (if applicable):
Bloom’s Taxonomy Level(s):
☒ Remembering ☒ Understanding ☒ Applying ☒ Analyzing ☒ Evaluating ☒ Creating
Levels of Technology Integration:
☐ Infusion Level: Students may work at a higher Bloom’s Level, but they do not have any “Voice or Choice”
during the activity and most of the decisions are made by the teacher.
☐ Integration Level: We would like to see ALL lessons/activities reach this level. The project is student-
driven. Students have “Voice and Choice” in the activities, selecting the topic of study and determining the
technology tool to demonstrate mastery of the standard. All products of learning are unique and
personalized. The teacher becomes more of a facilitator walking around monitoring the student-led
activity.
☒ Expansion Level: The projects created are shared outside of the classroom, publishing student work and
promoting authorship. This could be reached by showcasing the project on the school’s morning
newscast, posting the project to the classroom blog, or publishing via an outside source.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The bubbl.us tool of creating mind maps and in this case a timeline is
incredibly easy to use and learn to use. Students will be working in groups and they will be able to choose the
events on their timelines. This tool will easily map out the timeline as well as add any additional information
as subcategories for them to include in their projects. The students can also move the events around and
color coordinate what different years or events mean along the timeline. This is an innovative way to create a
timeline and is much quicker and neater than just drawing one out.
Lesson idea implementation: Students will get into groups of 2 or 3 and choose an era of history that we
have learned about in the year. Each group will have a different era. The group must make a timeline using
Bubbl.us and include at least 5 events on their timelines. Events can be creation of invention, famous battles,
treaties being signed, or other important historical events. Students must include a brief summary of what
the event is in the bubble they create. If they wish to add more information that can create a subcategory
based on that information. The events must be in chronological order and should include at least 3
subcategories with more information. Students will have 2 days in class to create their timelines and we will
present them on the third day. These timelines will be posted on the teacher’s blog (if applicable) for other
students and their parents to view.
Reflective Practice: Creating timelines is a great way for students to see how the timeline of events effect
history as well as helping with memorization. Creating timelines helped me immensely in my history classes in
all my levels of schooling including college. History is not my strong suit and I wanted to create a fun lesson
where students get to choose what events they think are important and that they want to research as well as
TFrazier, 2021
Basic Productivity Tools (BPT)
having some events that are very well known included to keep a baseline of the timeframe they are working
with. This is a great end of the year assignment and will help students remember points of history that they
learned in the beginning later at the end of the year. Students will present their timelines to the class and a
screenshot of the timelines will be posted onto the teacher’s blog so students can refer to these timelines and
parents can see their student’s work.
TFrazier, 2021
