Students and teachers at George Washington School in West Hempstead recently collaborated on a project surrounding parallel timelines.
The parallel timelines were a part the first unit of social studies in Ms. Ashleigh Longo’s sixth grade class. The class talked about how it compares different events occurring during the same time period. Students developed their own parallel timelines first, which compared personal events in their life (from birth in 2011 to present day) to world history events. After they competed their individual timelines, students wanted to share their individual events on a timeline. The class brainstormed what they could compare their life events to, besides world events.
Ms. Longo’s class discussed making a large parallel timeline to display in the hallway to have teachers write personal events in their lives (from 2011 to present only). At first, it was labeled, “Sixth grade students vs. GW teachers.” However, students wanted to get teacher’s assistants, nurses and custodians involved as well. So midway through, the group needed to change their timeline to get everyone involved. Additionally, George Washington had a special guest, Superintendent of Schools Dan Rehman, to add to their parallel timeline.
“Students were excited to see similar events amongst each other in addition to learning different things about their teachers,” Ms. Longo said.
