In order to meet the following objective: "Explain why significant events in U.S. political history are important today", I am having my students identify the 27 most important events in U.S. History and do a few things with them.

1. As a class, we will visit a website that has a pretty solid list of U.S. historical events that seem to be important here.
2. Each student will select one event that they feel they would enjoy researching and learning more about.
3. Once they have a good understanding of the event, students will create a Google Presentation slide on our shared Google Presentation.
4. Then, they will add their information to our shared timeline using our shared Google Spreadsheet (thanks to Timeline JS).  (There are lots of important points to be made regarding what can be typed into each field.)  The information they will need is the date (or range of dates) that their event happened, the title of the event, an explanation of the event, a picture from Google Images, the URL where the image was taken, a caption explaining the image
   
5. After they've entered their data, they need to embed the following code on their ePortfolio and reflect on their learning:

New Embed Code:
<iframe src='http://embed.verite.co/timeline/?source=0AvsdG6QMWIEMdE5MVmZIR3dLZ3BmdmR3cXhOenBMNVE&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&map&lang=en&height=650' width='100%' height='650' frameborder='0'></iframe>

New Spreadsheet to Edit:
https://docs.google.com/a/sd25.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvsdG6QMWIEMdE5MVmZIR3dLZ3BmdmR3cXhOenBMNVE#gid=0

Here is what it looks like:

Today, we discovered that our entire class accidentally transported back in time to 1768, Boston!  We found ourselves stranded in a time and place that we were unfamiliar with and without money, additional clothes, or a place to live!  Fortunately, our technology works here due to some strange anomaly in space-time!!!

In order to survive, we all need to quickly learn a trade, start earning some money, and find a place to live.  Along the way, we will hopefully meet some interesting people and discover some interesting facts about our country's history!

Here is what we need to accomplish today:

1. Look through the list of occupations here or here or here or here or here that were available in 1768 Boston and choose one to try to learn (make sure it is appropriate for an elementary school student to learn about).  Your number in class corresponds to the letter of the alphabet you need to choose from (e.g. 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.).
2. Create a page on our shared Google Presentation that explains your occupation to others.
   
3. "Search" the town for someone who will consider hiring us.
4. "Find" a place to live.
5. Determine your persona based on information from this time period (Keep your first name, but your job becomes your new last name).
6. Create a Voki introducing yourself with the following details: your name, your apprenticeship, why you think you have been transported to 1768 Boston, and what you hope to learn while here.
   
7. Embed your Voki on your ePortfolio - no need to add a reflection (it is built into the Voki).  You can, however, add more details to your blog entry by including photos of your job site or home, etc.
8. Below your Voki, you need to start writing in your "journal."  Describe the following in your post:

                1.  What is your job, why did you pick it, and how hard was it to find someone to let you apprentice with                      them?
                2.  Where are you living?  How hard was it to find?  Do you have to pay anything or do any work to sleep                          there?
                3.  Describe what your first day in Boston has been like (remember, you are a 5th grade student from 2013                      who is trying to get used to living in 1768, Boston!).

Because my students need to have a larger repertoire of "Character Traits" to choose from when describing characters in the books we read, we are creating a Visual Thesaurus of traits using Tagul.  Here is what it looks like so far.  Here is how we're doing it:

1. I found a wonderful list of character traits on Read-Write-Think (click here) that I highlighted.  I had my student choose their character trait from the list above, or from one of the following downloads.  (Additional lists: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All were downloads from Google Images.)
2. I taught my students how to use tagul.com, which is a word cloud generator (see images above).  My sign-in is: psolarz2013 and the password is psolarz2013.
   
3. I also taught my students how to use thesaurus.com as a way to find synonyms and antonyms for a word.
4. Each student chose a word from the list (and determined its natural antonym with help from the thesaurus) and created a word cloud for it using the synonyms that were listed on thesaurus.com - They clicked on their preferred antonym and used the synonyms from that word's list for their second word cloud.  
5. Finally, I asked that my students submit their word clouds to me via a form that I posted on our website (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it) and post their word clouds on their ePortfolios with a reflection.

Here is what we ended up with: http://psolarz.weebly.com/character-traits-thesaurus.html

I think that this 75-minute activity was a good exercise in thinking, because I asked them to delete any words or phrases that they did not know, or did not accurately reflect the definition of the word.   They also had to decide on an antonym that was as close to the opposite of the original word as they could come up with.  Finally, they had to remember (or use their notes that they took) to do all of the technology pieces of the activity.  By the end, my students told me that they were mentally drained, but that they enjoyed the activity.  Exactly what I hoped for!!!

Now we can use this list whenever we are analyzing the character traits of someone in the stories that we read!