Goal
To facilitate students' learning about the history of the American presidency by having students create their own lessons based on C-SPAN's American Presidents Timeline poster.

Objectives
Students will:

• Learn facts about the American presidents and some of the collateral events that affected their world and ultimately, our world;
  
• Select and use strategies to understand words and text relating to American history;
  
• Make and confirm inferences from what is read, including interpretation of graphs, statistical illustrations and diagrams;
  
• Construct activities to demonstrate what they have learned.

Procedure

1. Explain the nature of a timeline, pointing out features of the American Presidents Timeline to demonstrate how to use this tool.

2. Tell the class their assignment is to develop activities using the timeline to teach students about the American presidency. The students are now the teachers and must prepare a lesson that uses the timeline as a learning resource.

3. Divide the class into working groups of 3 or 4 students. Let them examine the timeline to discover the information it offers, the questions it raises, and the way it is organized. Offer a minimal amount of guidance as students will practice critical thinking skills and problem solving in their groups.

4. Allow approximately 3-4 class hours. Check students' progress. Have students switch groups and try out the different activities.

Class Activities and Results

Crossword puzzles
Groups draw the puzzles and then use a computer software program to design them. A crossword is technically difficult to arrange if the presidents' names are always used as the answers. Advise students to vary their clues so that some of the answers are short, and the puzzle can be put together.

Trivia games
Students create "scavenger hunts" or lists of questions that could be answered by searching the timeline.

Jeopardy
Students create a board with five categories and five questions for each category. Use poster board and index cards to create the Jeopardy board. Write the clues on separate index cards. Students can play the game in teams.

Map Skills
Give each student a map of the United States and instruct them to label each state. Then have the students take the presidents names and mark the states where they were born.

Additional Activities
1. Instruct each student to use the timeline to construct "the life and responsibilities of a president" or a personal timeline which illustrates their own path to the presidency.

2. Have students construct "Thinking Maps" from the timeline.

a. A circle map visually and textually defines a term in context. Have the student draw a small circle in the center of the paper. (Teachers may wish to make these in advance and copy them for students.) In the center, write a president's name. Then, surround the president's name with facts about that president.

b. A bubble map can describe, define or show a relationship. Draw a small circle in the center of the paper and surround it with six circles like spokes of a wheel around the center circle. Draw a line from the center circle to each surrounding circle.