INQUIRY 6: TIME

Times of our Lives

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Newspaper Issues to Use: All
Note: This is an individual activity.

Essential Questions:
What is a generation gap?
How do newspapers reflect popular culture?

Vocabulary:
There are as many different definitions of time as there are people and disciplines. But within those definitions, there are three basic kinds of time: Biological time, geologic time, and mechanical or physical time.

Biological time relates to the internal clocks of animals, plants and people. It is reflected in seasons, lifecycles, and migration patterns.

Geologic time is based on the age of the earth and the universe. Usually understood as millions and billions of years, geologic time is also called "deep time."

Physical or mechanical time is the kind of time with which we are most familiar. Each of us occupies a physical space in time and it is marked with mechanical devices called "clocks" "watches," and "calendars."

Historical time periods fall within the world of physical/mechanical time and are a way of dividing time into larger chunks (calendars only cover one year). By breaking the past into decades, centuries, and millennia, we gain a referential time frame in which we can study the people, places, and events that happened before present-day.

Generation is a term used to describe the average time interval between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring. The standard "gap" between generations is considered 20 years.

Inquiry Set-up for Students:
Last summer, while traveling to a family reunion, you and your family got lost in a strange phenomenon called in "the generation gap." Still drifting in this invisible void, your family begins to speak in languages no one understands. Your grandmother reminisces about doing the bunnyhop in a poodle skirt. Your father says something about staying alive on the disco floor. Worst of all, both your grandmother and your father think that NSYNC is some sort of garbage disposal! None of it makes sense because you are all lost in the "generation gap."
     In order to free your family from the gap, you need to build a time ramp from past to present. Like a highway on-ramp, your time ramp needs to be constructed of very strong materials. Those strong materials are basic facts. Find the answers to the following questions, and you'll be well on your way.

1. What year was one of your great-grandmothers born? (Note whether it was your father's or mother's.)
2. What year was one of your grandmothers born? (Note whether it was your father's or mother's.)
3. What year was your father born?
4. What year was your mother born?
5. What year were you born?
6. How old was your mother when you were born?
7. What is the "average generation" in your family? (Figure this out by adding the years that your great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and you were born together and dividing by four.)
8. How many years are thought to equal a "standard generation"?
9. What are the years of all of the newspaper sections in your set?
10. What historic events happened in Washington between the date of your great-grandmother's birth and your birth date? Name at least four historic events, trying to find 1-2 in each person's life (great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, you). Use the newspapers as your source for historical information.

Now, use this information to build an illustrated time ramp (similar to a freeway on-ramp) that leads out of the "generation gap" and into present-day.

Activity Plan: Teacher Directions
Step 1: Introduce the Inquiry with a discussion about generations—what are they, what the term "generation" means.

Step 2: Read the Inquiry Set-up to the students. Provide each student with a list of the questions to be answered. Suggest that the students do some family interviews to gather the necessary information.

Step 3: Have students create illustrated "time ramps" that lead from the "generation gap" to present-day. These can be completed in either two or three dimensions and can be modeled after a long freeway on-ramp.
Here's how:

• Use a base of cardboard or heavy paper on which to draw the time-ramp and present-day freeway outlines. This can be used for two- or three-dimensional versions.
• Have each student use the years of the newspapers as "mile markers," adding in dates beginning with the birth date of the student's great-grandmother(s) and ending with the birth date of the student.
• Students should locate cars or other individual transportation representative of "GGM, GM, M and Me" on the ramp at the appropriate time locations. Mark the birth years of each person (GGM, GM, M, and Me) in on the ramp.
• Students can use copies (probably reduced) of pictures and headlines from the papers to illustrate the historic events along the family route (as highway signs, billboards, or even graffiti).

Step 4: Have a "Generation Day" where students will share their final projects in a marketplace type of presentation. Have half of the class set out their projects and explain them to the other students, then switch places.

Step 5: Conclude by devising an "average generation gap" for the class by writing all of the student's averages on the board and having them calculate the class average. How close is it to the "standard generation"? Define through discussion the terms, "bunnyhop," poodle skirt," and "disco." In what decades did they originate, and why might the words cause people to fall into a generation gap?

EALRs:
Reading 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2
Communications 2.4, 3.1, 4.3
Math 1.1, 1.5, 3.1, 3.3
History 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2
Arts 1.3, 1.4, 3.1, 4.1