CHARLES DICKENS
The last two lessons before Christmas holidays we have been working on a biographical text about Charles Dickens in class. My 3rd ESO students have learned about one of the most relevant English writers, they have read about his childhood, his life and his prolific literary work. The main goal was to make them aware of the author of Christmas Carol, his time and some of his most famous titles. The final task was the creation of a time line to sum up all the facts they had learnt using the tool TimeToast.
First lesson was devoted to present the author and his time, reading the text aloud and answering some comprehension questions. Then, they were asked to individually make a time-line draft on paper using information from the text. During the second lesson they worked in pairs. They compared, improved and drew a definite version of their time lines and provided a digital version with TimeToast. They loved working online, looking for pictures to illustrate their concepts and synthesizing ideas. They found TimeToast a very easy and intuitive tool to work with. After this task, my students are able to point Charles Dickens’ times, to mention two or three facts of his life and remember the name of at least one more title besides Christmas Carol. TimeToast is definitely a great ally when you want your students to organize and remember data which follows a chronological order.
Here you are some examples of my students' work:
