Meaningful Time Frame

One way of knowing history is "organizing events and people in a meaningful time frame" (Hennings, 1993, p. 363). This pivotal element of history answers the questions of when events took place and when key figures in history lived and acted. As Hennings (1993, p. 363) notes, "an ability to work with time relationships, or chronology, is an important beginning point in reading historical accounts. To help readers order events within a historical sequence - to see human beings operating within their time frame - authors provide two aids: dates and words that suggest sequence."

Working with Dates

Hennings (1993) suggests that readers gain an initial idea of time frames by skimming the reading and noting the dates discussed by the author.

As the text is read more carefully for content, readers are encouraged to record dates using some organizational tool, preferably a time line. Along with the actual dates, the significance of the dates, events, and people is noted on the time line (see Time Lines in the Information Organization section for examples).

After documenting dates with an organizational aid, encourage students to visualize and mentally plot the temporal order of events in their minds.

To make the time frames more meaningful, students should relate them to known reference points. For example, "these events occurred after the Civil War" or "the person lived several hundred years before Egypt's pyramids were built." Reference points for beginning pupils may be related to the nation's history, but older students should be encouraged to continually expand their knowledge base of temporal reference points. By actuating students' prior knowledge of time and events, information becomes more meaningful and students become more involved.

A final strategy for dates involves doing calculations with them. Calculate the number of years that passed between two events, calculate the number of years that passed between an event and a reference point event, or calculate a person's life span. This approach "helps readers gain ownership over time relationships" (Hennings, 1993, p. 365).

Working with Signal Words

A variety of words may be used by authors to signal the passage of time. Look and listen for these cue words while reading and in class.

Hennings' (1993, p. 365) "sequence-signaling words include:

• first, second, third
• for 1 year, for 10 years
• first, next, finally
• yesterday, today, tomorrow
• before, while, after
• then, now
• meanwhile, soon
• not long after, later, in, on, during
• childhood, youth, old age
• pre- and post- as in prewar and postwar periods."

Hennings (1993) suggests that readers gain an initial idea of time frames by skimming the reading and noting the signal words used by the author.

To make the time frames more meaningful, students should relate them to known reference points.

As the text is read more carefully for content, readers are encouraged to record events using some organizational tool, preferably a time line. Along with the relative order of events (without dates), the significance of the events and people is noted on the time line (see Time Lines in the Information Organization section for examples).

Use signal words "to identify periods and subperiods into which [one] can group events. Thus as students read a biography, the teacher can model how to categorize events in a person's life as youth, middle years, later years; as students read the history of science, the teacher can model how to categorize events as pre-Copernican and post-Copernican or pre-Darwin and post-Darwin" (Hennings, 1993, p. 365).

A final strategy involves doing calculations with signal words. Estimate the number of years that passed between two events, estimate the number of years that passed between an event and a reference point event, or estimate a person's life span.