Without sharing the date with anyone else, students try to line up in order of invention. Standards Objectives Learn that technology has been around for a long time. Each student gets a slip of paper with the name of a technology and the year it was invented. Students keep their paper hidden and cannot talk about the year, but they can talk about the technology. By talking to each other, students try to line up in order of invention.
Instructions Introduce the activity and distribute the slips of paper.
Line up students so that they talk to one or two neighbors instead of milling about in a swarm. Encourage them to tell each other the names of their technologies and then discuss which one they figure came first. When an order is formed or it appears that students have learned all that they are going to from talking to each other, announce the end of discussion. Again, starting from the earliest, have students read both the name of the technology and the year invented. Make the line correspond to the true invention order with only two students moving at a time.