TIMETOAST

We have been working with several biographies these days and oone of them was dealing with the writer Charles Dickens.
 https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2011872

We divided the students (4ºESO) into several groups of three people and they were first asked to read the text (in this case, a biography). In this unit we are revising the past tenses and the passive voice. A biography seemed to be a very clear example of the use of these tenses and again, the importance of this author in modern society is questionless. Apart from therevision of the grammatical aspect, I wanted my students to considerate the life of an important British writer and also to think about the most important aspects  and the most important books by this writer in order to include them in the TimeToast project.
The text came with several comprehension questions that we answered after reading it.
Afterwards, I told the students what TimetToast was about and showed them an example of the final result from one of my colleagues' blog. Since it was very visual, they immediatle liked it. As usual, they had to decide who was going to do what. They decided that they could include more information and one of the searched on the internet in order to provide more biographical facts.
I believe that this tool was of great help because at the beginning the students wanted to include all the information, and even provide a picture for all the events and so it took them a lot of time but then they came to the conclusion that less is more and had to debate the most important aspects to be considered. Another aspect I liked is the fact that the students wanted to do their best and so they read different sources (which reinforced the reading activity) and I think that the result, that is, having created their own timeline has helped them become aware of the importance of Charles Dickens, an author they thought they didn't know but, on the contrary, was very familiar to them all.