This tag was created by Carolyn Corey.

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The Promise and Practice of Teaching Data Literacy in Social Studies: A Companion Site A Taxonomy of Data Visualizations Information can be visualized in multiple ways, from bar graphs to scatterplots, choropleth maps to distribution maps, timelines to time series. Designers can choose from an array of graphical elements such as points, lines, or icons used to represent data, and multiple aesthetic attributes such as color, shape, and size. Furthermore, designers can apply multiple combinations of titles, legends, and explanatory text to provide context for a data visualization. Given the almost dizzying array of data visualizations students may encounter in social studies, it is helpful to place them in categories related to the types of questions they will help us answer. How do students learn with data visualizations? Reading data visualizations in print and online social studies texts can improve students' overall comprehension and quality of reasoning. And there is evidence to suggest that reading data visualizations helps students better understand historical and geographic context, multiple causation, and change over time — all important concepts for students to grasp in social studies subject areas. However, students may face significant challenges in trying to make sense of different kinds of data visualizations. This section provides insight into both benefits and challenges of reading timelines, maps, and graphs and charts. How should students analyze data visualizations in social studies? The challenges that data visualizations present, coupled with their prevalence in social studies texts, standardized assessments, in online social studies resources, and as sources of information in society, suggest that teaching with and about data visualizations in social studies is essential. This module provides guidance for how teachers can support students' data literacy for social studies. Index of Lesson Plans This page contains a list of the minimal manuals and lessons found on this website. Minimal manuals are designed to be adapted to different grade levels and do not have a grade designation associated with them. Lesson plans are organized according to the school level for which they are designed. However, many of these lessons can be adapted for different grade levels.

Temple of Time (1846)

This timeline graphic, The Temple of Time, was created in 1846 by Emma Willard. This temple shows Universal Chronology. The description on the left bottom corner reads, “This Temple exhibits at one view the whole scheme of Universal Chronology, from the Creation to the present time. Each pillar represents the century corresponding to the number at its base. The pillars are in groups of tens, four groups before Christ, and two after, the last thousand years being deficient by a part of the nineteenth and the whole of the twentieth century. As pillars in building are begun at the bottom, so the time of the century represented by each pillar, is reckoned upwards. (See pillar for the eighteenth century.) The names of the pillars are of those sovereign by which the age is chiefly distinguished. The floor-work shows what have been the principal nations of the world, through the several centuries, which may be known by tracing to the bases of the pillars on each side. Of the principal nations of Europe, the names of all the sovereigns now reigning, and of those who have reigned since the discovery of America, are inserted; but antecedent to that period, only the names of the principal sovereigns are set down. The roof of the Temple contains, in five compartments, the names of the most celebrated persons of the age to which they belonged. The Temple in so far as the pillars and the roof are concerned, might be called the Temple of Time and of Fame. All the names inserted on those parts are of persons not now living.” This data visualization can be found at http://www.mappingthenation.com/blog/how-emma-willard-mapped-time-in-the-nineteenth-century/

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