A child-centered activity: A Personal Timeline

The aim of a child-centered activity is not only that students acquire a body of knowledge (as in the teacher-centered model), but also to develop autonomous processes of thought. The spontaneous activity of the student is, at once, the goal and the starting point for educational activities. For this reason, I am going to show an example of a child-centered activity, which in my opinion sumarizes what it means. I have observed it the last week at 6th grade. Students have to create their personal timeline, by showing moments of the past, present and future. 

First of all, the activity is giving the opportunity to revise three verb tenses. What's more, it is a completely personal activity, where pupils have to think about what information they want to include and rewrite this information in sentences with the appropriate tense. They can also become more autonomous, because they have the responsability to get the information, to write it and to distribute it in their personal timelines. The teacher has not said that there is a compulsory way to present this work. I consider that this "freedom" regarding to the final work allows students to become more creative and to enjoy more the activity: they can use a power point presentation, a cardboard drawing, a ruler with some pasted papers...