Chilling Times Timeline

Lesson Overview

Historical Thinking Concept(s)

• Establish historical significance
• Identify continuity and change
• Analyze cause and consequence
• Take historical perspectives

Learning Outcomes

• Read the article titled “Chilling Times.”
• Summarize their assigned event by filling out the provided template.
• Create an illustration to complement their summary.
• Draw inferences regarding the impact of their assigned event.
• Collaborate to create a timeline.

Lesson Activity

ACTIVATING

• Students should be familiar with how to read and summarize informational texts.
• Introduce students to the Cold War by having them read the article “New World, New Fight” on pages 4-5.
• You can also present information about the Cold War through videos, articles, or podcasts (some suggestions are at the end of this lesson) and have students use the See-Think-Wonder strategy to activate their thinking.

ACQUIRING

• Organize students into large groups (at least 5 students).
• Assign a specific event from the article “Chilling Times” to each student within a group. Each group can be assigned a compilation of different events.

• Task them with reading their section independently and summarizing the event. Students can fill out the template, which will require them to include the event’s date, a brief summary of the event, creating an illustration, and responding to questions about whether the event affected Indigenous communities and its impact on contemporary Canada.

APPLYING

• Students will work together to assemble their sheets in chronological order and to create a timeline of the events they studied.
• Ask each student to share their insights about their assigned event with their groupmates.
• Display each group’s timeline to the rest of the class. Students can go around to learn about the events that they did not summarize and see how other students interpreted the impact of these events.

Materials/Resources

• “Canada and the Cold War,” Kayak: Canada’s History Magazine for Kids
• Chilling Times Timeline Template

Additional resources to help activate students’ knowledge about the Cold War

• “Canada and the Cold War (Plain Language Summary),” The Canadian Encyclopedia.
• “How the Cold War started in Ottawa,” Canadiana, YouTube.
• “Duck and Cover: How one desk could save your life,” Diefenbunker.
• “Rocky and Bullwinkle & the Cuban Missile Crisis,” WNYC Studios, 11 October 2012.