Living Graph
Overview of the Living Graph Template 
A "Living Graph" encourages students not only to select the most important events within a topic, but also to rate them against criteria such as success and failure, strength and weakness and so on.
Open the Living Graph Template
Examples of the Living Graph Template
History: What factors contributed to German Nationalism before 1850?
History: Henry VII's Break with Rome
History: The Life of Henry VIII (a good example of a "teacher prepared" template activity).
History: The Development of German Nationalism (by Mr. Wright)
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Sample Lesson Plan for the Living Graph Template
Ask students, working individually or in pairs / small groups, to identify what they consider to be the 10 most significant events within the topic of study. For example, in a History class students could select the 10 most important events in a particular period; in English literature they could select the most important plot developments in a novel or play.
Stage 2: Brainstorm
The teacher asks students to contribute their ideas to a whole-class discussion. This will encourage some debate, discussion and reflection.
Stage 3: Depiction
Students then open the ClassTools Timeline Template and plot their chosen events into it. They should aim not simply to describe "what happens" but "why it is significant"
Stage 3: Categorisation
Finally, the students have to drag and drop the events high or low on the graph to indicate something of relevance: success or failure, for example. Safety or Danger could be another idea.
Other Ideas for the Living Graph Template
- The Teacher could produce a template with some (or all) of the events completed. The job of the students is then to drag them into the correct chronological order, and high or low on the graph as they see fit. This would make the activity more accessible to lower-ability students.
- Students should be encouraged to use the "colour code" facility to categorise the events they have chosen. This could be as straightforward as "happy" events in one colour, "unhappy" events in another; more ambitiously, events could be colour-coded according to whether they are social, political or religious and so on. Best of all, the students should come up with their own ideas about how to categorise the events!
- Students should also use the "add background image" facility to choose an appropriate backdrop for their work before printing it off / saving it as a webpage.
Do you have any other ideas about how to use this template? Please let us know!
Open the Living Graph Template
