An Inter-Disciplinary Mini-Unit

Level: Intermediate, Junior High, High School

Purpose: To research inventions and create original inventions followed by timelines regarding their actual and imagined impacts on history.

Overview: These lessons focus on investigating selected invention and their places in history. They will also focus on hypothesizing the changes in history had each invention not been created. Subsequent lessons involve designing an original invention, placing it in an historical context, and hypothesizing the changes in history as a result.

Lesson One: Students will research one invention that is at least fifty years old. (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science)

Lesson Two: Students will create an alternative timeline as though the invention they have researched was never invented accounting for changes in every area of life. (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science)

Lesson Three: Students will design an original invention and place it somewhere in the context of history. (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science)

Lesson Four: Students will write an alternative history from the time of their personal invention to the present accounting for the changes that their invention would have had on society. (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science)

Lesson One

Objective:

Students will research one invention that is at least fifty years old.

Materials:

Educational Structures

Procedure:

1. Have each student find and research an invention which is at least fifty years old. Allow them to present their findings using whatever method they choose.

Lesson Two

Objective:

Students will create an alternative timeline as though the invention they have researched was never invented accounting for changes in every area of life.

Materials:

Educational Structures

work from lesson one

plain, white paper

crayons, colored pencils, or markers

Procedure:

1. Using the invention that they researched in lesson one, have the students create a timeline that shows what aspects of history would be different if this invention had not been invented. Have the students consider what might have been created to take up the slack for the missing invention. For example, just because light bulbs were not invented, does not mean that electricity is not in use. Also, be sure to have students explore the following areas:

historical events

other inventions

lifestyles and fads

economics

Lesson Three

Objective:

Students will design an original invention and place it somewhere in the context of history.

Materials:

plain, white paper

crayons, colored pencils, or markers

Procedure:

1. Have the students to design their own invention. They may describe it in words or in drawings.

2. Have the students then choose a date in history when they would have liked their invention to have been invented. For example, a students might invent a comb with a mirror attached to it so a person can see the back of their hair as they comb it. That same student may decide that his invention was created in 1924. Students should write a journal which describes the inventor and the invention during this time period.

Lesson Four

Objective:

Students will write an alternative history from the time of their personal invention to the present accounting for the changes that their invention would have had on society.

Materials:

work from lesson three

Procedure:

1. Have the students consider their invention and their journal from lesson two. From this information, have them write an alternative account of history from the time of their invention to the present. They should consider the same areas that they looked at in their lesson two timeline.

The students should be able to make a timeline showing changes to history.

The students should be able to design an original invention.

The students should be able to write an alternative account of history.