Secondary

Timeline Unit

Time Estimate
5 class periods
Category
PA Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps

Through primary source analysis, close reading, and historical research, students explore how Pennsylvania writers responded to the events shaping their eras. Using the Chronological Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps, they build a class timeline and craft an evidence-based argument about which literary voices deserve amplification for America’s 250th anniversary. 

image of students placing notes on a timeline board

Standards

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1

Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6

Determine an author’s particular point of view and analyze how rhetoric advances the point of view. 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7

Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem.

PA ELA CC.1.2.B

PA ELA CC.1.2.B

PA ELA CC.1.2.D

PA ELA CC.1.2.D

PA ELA CC.1.4.B

PA ELA CC.1.4.B

PA ELA CC.1.4.V

PA ELA CC.1.4.V

Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

Objective(s)

Students will independently use literary, historical, and visual evidence to evaluate which Pennsylvania voices merit public remembrance. 

Big Ideas:

  • Literature both reflects and shapes historical contexts.
  • Chronology reveals patterns of change, continuity, and significance.
  • Historical commemoration reflects power and perspective.
  • Evidence-based analysis requires distinguishing correlation from causation.

Essential Questions:

  • How do Pennsylvania authors reflect and respond to their historical moment?
  • What patterns emerge when literature and history are viewed chronologically?
  • Who decides what stories are commemorated?
  • As the U.S. turns 250, which Pennsylvania voices deserve amplification? 

Vocabulary

  • chronological
  • historical perspective
  • historical significance 
  • primary source 
  • secondary source 
  • perspective 
  • bias 
  • culture 
  • society 
  • context 
  • literary movement 
  • correlation 
  • causation 

Materials and Resources

 

Instructional Procedures

Day 1: Introduction

Goal: Analyze a historical image and generate questions about historical perspective

Post a Guiding Question: As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, which Pennsylvania stories deserve to be remembered? Whose voices have shaped the state, and whose have been overlooked?  

As America celebrates 250, what we choose to remember reflects power and perspective. Every commemoration is selective. When we elevate some stories, we leave others out. In this unit, you will analyze which Pennsylvania literary voices deserve amplification and why, culminating in a 1–2 page evidence-based argument explaining how a chosen Pennsylvania literary figure reflects or responds to their historical moment and whether their voice should be highlighted.

Primary Source Analysis:  
Display an Industrial Pennsylvania image from the Library of Congress without an introduction (possible images: Iron Mills at Night, Homestead Steel Works, Harper's Weekly: The Homestead Riot).


Introduce the  Observe → Reflect → Question primary source analysis tool. Model the process. 

  • Observe: First, slow down and just observe. No interpreting yet. What do you see? Be specific, What visual evidence supports your observation? I notice (objects, people, clothing, environment, light, expressions, movement). What details make you say that? 

    e.g., I notice several smokestacks. The smoke fills almost the entire sky. OR I also see a crowd near the building and men in hats with rifles.

  • Reflect: What might it feel like to live or work here? e.g., If I imagine being there, the air might feel thick or polluted. 

    This suggests _____. The detail that supports this is _____. 

  • Question: That makes me wonder ____ e.g., That makes me wonder: was industrial progress exciting or exhausting for people living here? If you were a writer living here, what might you praise? What might you criticize? A writer from this era might respond to ___ because ___. 

Now let’s add historical knowledge.

Mini Lesson: Provide a brief overview of industrialization in Pennsylvania (steel production in Pittsburgh, immigration waves, labor unrest, urban growth, pollution). Context sharpens our interpretation. 

Return to the image. How does knowing this history change how you interpret the image? Whose perspective might this image represent? A factory owner? A worker? A photographer documenting reform? 

How does historical knowledge change how we interpret the image? What might this image not show? What perspectives might be missing? 

Tomorrow, we test whether a writer from this same era confirms or complicates what we see.  

Exit Ticket: Two words that capture the photo’s mood and one prediction about what a writer from this era might focus on. 

Day 2: Close Reading with Context

Goal: Connect literary language to historical context

Return to the image briefly and share some of the exit ticket responses. Yesterday we examined an image of industrial Pittsburgh. You said the image felt ___, ___, and ___. You predicted that a writer from this era might focus on ___. 

Images show us a moment. But literature shows us how people felt about that moment. Today we test our predictions. Did writers describe this world the same way the image suggests?  

  • Distribute a copy of the selected passage and read it aloud (e.g., 3 paragraphs from Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case," beginning with "It was at the theatre..." Willa Cather lived in Pittsburgh for a decade; however, is not exclusively a Pennsylvania author. "Paul's Case" is set in Pittsburgh and is selected to illustrate the response to historical events, while allowing students to discover other Pennsylvania literary figures of the era). 
  • After reading, invite students to mark language in the passage that reflects tension, change, environment, or power (tie back to words from the collected exit tickets).
  • Pair/share: What feelings from yesterday's photo are echoed in this text? Where does the text complicate or support what we assumed?
  • Call on 2-3 pairs to share their responses. 

Now we move from noticing to creating an argument. Introduce and model a Claim–Evidence–Historical Link sentence on the board. 

  • Claim: The excerpt reflects tensions created by industrial life in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh.
  • Evidence: Cather describes the city as a “smoke-palled city” of “grimy toil.” 
  • Historical Link: This coincides with early 1900s industrial expansion, pollution, and rigid class structures in Pennsylvania’s steel cities.  

Mini Lesson: Correlation ≠ Causation. Correlation means two things happen at the same time. Causation means one directly caused the other.

Model how to avoid assuming that “because X and Y happened around the same time, X caused Y.” Emphasize evidence and language like coincides with, reflects, or responds to. Discuss the differences between causation and correlation statements, for example:

  • Factories increased, so this author wrote negatively.
  • As factories expanded, this author's writing increasingly emphasized pollution and isolation.

When two things happen at the same time, that’s correlation. 

Turn to a partner. Decide which of these is correlation and which is causation:

  • Steel production increased and Pittsburgh became smoky.
  • Steel production created pollution in Pittsburgh.

What evidence would we need to prove causation? To claim causation, we would need letters, essays, diaries, or statements showing direct influence.

Discussion Questions:

  • How does literature function as historical evidence? 
  • How can authors both reflect and influence their moment?  

Writers are witnesses and shapers. As we read this week, listen for echoes (or disagreements) between texts and history. Images capture a moment. Literature captures a perspective.

My claim is that the excerpt from "Paul’s Case" reflects the tensions created by industrial life in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. 

My evidence comes from the contrast Cather draws between Paul’s industrial city and the world of the theater. Paul sees the stage entrance as the “actual portal of Romance,” a “secret temple” in the middle of a “smoke-palled city, enamored of figures and grimy toil.” The phrase “smoke-palled city” suggests pollution and industrial darkness, while “grimy toil” evokes factory labor and economic productivity. In contrast, the theater offers “starry apple orchards” and “perpetual sunshine,” an artificial but beautiful escape from his ordinary surroundings. 

Now let me connect this to history: In the early 1900s, Pittsburgh was a major center of steel production and industrial expansion. The city was known for heavy smoke from mills and furnaces, rigid class structures, and a culture that emphasized hard work and financial success. Paul’s world of “petty economies” and advice about how to “succeed in life” reflects middle-class values shaped by industrial capitalism. His attraction to artificial beauty and theater mirrors broader anxieties about conformity, labor, and the loss of individuality in an industrial city. 

Cather’s story does not simply portray one unhappy young man; it mirrors broader anxieties about conformity, class mobility, and identity in an industrial city. 

Today we practiced with Industrial Pennsylvania. Tonight and tomorrow, you’ll investigate your own era. Research is stronger when you already understand the time period.  

Assign eras to small groups (3–4 students per group): Colonization, Revolutionary/Early National, Westward Expansion/Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction, Industrialization and Progressive, World Wars and Great Depression, Post War, Contemporary (from the PA Center for the Book Chronological Cultural & Literary Maps). 

Homework: Each group member is to identify 3 major historical events in their assigned era (PA or national); 1 economic or social trend; 2 Pennsylvania authors from their era; and 1 group whose voice may have been marginalized 

Day 3: Research with the Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps 

Goal: Gather and evaluate sources about an era

Yesterday, we practiced connecting literature to history using Industrial Pennsylvania. We saw how context sharpens interpretation — and how careful we must be about claiming causation. Today, instead of analyzing one prepared example, you’ll investigate a historical era and begin building the foundation for your argument. You each identified major events, trends, authors, and potentially marginalized voices.  

Mini Lesson: List vs. Timeline. Historians don’t just list events. Lists collect information whereas, historians organize them chronologically to see patterns. Timelines help us see change, continuity, cause, and response. Tomorrow, when we construct a full-class timeline, we’re not decorating the wall. We’re building an analytical tool. 

Good research asks focused questions before collecting facts. Today, your small group will draft two guiding questions to narrow your research, for example:

  • How did [industry/migration/labor] shape literary themes in [era/place]? 
  • How did ___ influence themes of ___? 
  • In what ways did writers respond to ___? 
  • Whose voices were amplified or silenced during ___? 

Circulate and refine. 

Students use the chronological maps and other credible sources to develop note cards for the collective timeline. Groups should have a combination of events and authors. Each note card should include: 

  • Event/Author 
  • Dates 
  • Why this matters
  • Source citation  

Example:

As you collect information, evaluate source credibility: authority, date, purpose, perspective. Record citation information immediately to avoid later errors. 

Before you trust a source, ask: 

  • Who wrote it?
  • When? 
  • For what purpose? 
  • From what perspective?

Homework:  Select two short excerpts from one author in your era. This can be copy and pasted onto a note card. Identify the historical event it connects to, and write 3-4 sentences about the connection: how might it reflect or respond to the event? Cite your sources. 

A list of possible selections by historical era is provided as a teacher resource.

Day 4: Construct and Analyze the Timeline

Goal: Identify chronological patterns and historical significance  

Using the note cards and butcher paper, construct a collective timeline. A timeline can also be created virtually using applications like Tiki-toki.

Yesterday you gathered historical events, authors, and excerpts. Today we place them in chronological order to see something historians care deeply about: patterns. A single event tells us something, but events placed in sequence tell us how societies change. When historians notice patterns, they start asking new questions:

  • Why did this happen here? 
  • Why now? 
  • Who was included? Who was missing?

Notice how placing events side by side changes how they feel. An isolated fact tells us little. In sequence, it tells a story. It shows patterns — migration, industrialization, reform.

Once constructed, take part in a gallery walk. With sticky notes in three different colors (e.g., yellow, blue, pink), invite students to silently annotate the timeline in a gallery walk. Leave at least three notes: 

  • One pattern you notice (yellow) 
  • One example of change over time (blue) 
  • One gap or missing voice (pink) 

Our timeline is selective, already making choices about commemoration. Chronology allows us to see patterns. 

Guide students through discussion using three analytical lenses.

(1) Clustering: 

  • Where do we see clustering? Are certain decades crowded? What historical forces might explain the increase? (economic change? technological advancements? reform?) e.g., Look at the 1880–1920 section. 
  • Why do we suddenly see more literary responses here? When I see this timeline cluster around 1910, I start asking why. What was happening in Pennsylvania then?
  • Where are economic events clustered?

(2) Literary Response:

  • Now compare the dates of historical events to the dates of literary texts. 
  • Do writers respond immediately to events? Where are literary responses delayed? Does literature respond immediately to events, or do themes surface years later? 
  • If you compare the earliest entries to the latest, what has changed? (Earlier entries emphasize ___, later ones emphasize ___.)

(3) Missing Voices:

  • Every timeline reflects choices. If we only included the most famous authors, whose stories might disappear?
  • Who is absent from this timeline? Workers? Women? Indigenous voices? Black Pennsylvanians? Immigrants? 
  • What does omission reveal about power and commemoration? 

Mini‑research: Add one missing voice to the timeline (e.g., underrepresented populations, women workers, Indigenous perspectives, immigrant press) to the timeline with source noted. 

Step back and look at the timeline we just built. What we’ve created is more than a list of events and writers. It’s a map of how literature and history interact. Historians look at timelines to identify patterns. Literary scholars ask a slightly different question: Which writers help us understand those patterns? Literature doesn’t exist in isolation. Writers respond to the world around them: sometimes reflecting it, sometimes critiquing it, and sometimes shaping it. 

Now we shift from studying the whole timeline to focusing on one writer within it.

Scan the timeline and consider:

  • Which writer connects strongly to an important event?
  • Which writer represents a group whose voice was often overlooked?
  • Which writer helps explain a pattern we noticed?

Choose one writer who helps explain something important about Pennsylvania’s history. Your goal is not to pick the most famous author. Your goal is to pick an author who helps us understand their historical moment. Remember our guiding question: As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, which Pennsylvania stories deserve to be remembered? The writer you choose should help answer that question.

Once you have identified one literary figure, start connecting three things: a historical event, a literary theme, and an interpretation. To do so, respond to the following prompts:

  1. A pattern I notice on the timeline is...
  2. A writer who connects to this pattern is...
  3. The historical event most connected to this author is...
  4. A theme in this author's excerpt is...
  5. One possible claim about this connection is...

Let me show you how this turns into a claim, using the earlier example of Willa Cather. 

  1. Industrialization reshaped Pennsylvania cities
  2. Willa Cather
  3. growth of Pittsburgh's steel industry
  4. Desire to escape from "grimy toil"... "to be carried out...away from everything"
  5. Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case" reflects the psychological effects of industrial Pittsburgh by portraying a young man who seeks escape from a work-centered society.

Tonight, choose the author you want to focus on for your essay. Use the timeline and your notes from today to compose a working thesis.

Homework: Using a literary figure and an era of interest, compose a claim that connects literature, history, and interpretation. 

Offer optional scaffolds: 

  • While many viewed ___ as ___, ___ reveals ___. 
  • Although ___ appears to focus on ___, the historical context suggests ___. 
  • Through ___ reflects/responds to ___ in ___ era. 
  • The timeline shows that ___ shaped Pennsylvania literature; ___’s writing reflects this through ___.

Day 5: Writing

Goal: Write an evidence-based argument 

Over the past four days, you’ve moved from image to text, from text to history, from history to chronology. Today, you will synthesize this information. 

In 1-2 pages (approximately 400-600 words): How does your chosen Pennsylvania writer reflect or respond to their historical moment, and why does that voice deserve (or not deserve) amplification? Use at least one excerpt and one historical event from the timeline to support your claim. This is not a five-paragraph research paper. It is a focused, well-supported argument. 

General format guidelines:

Paragraph 1: Claim and Context - introduce the author and era, present a working thesis 

  • “While some may argue that ___, the evidence suggests ___.” 
  • “Although the author does not directly reference ___, the historical context reveals ___.” 

Paragraph 2: Literary analysis

  • Brief quoted phrase(s) or paraphrase
  • Analyze language
  • Connect to theme 

Paragraph 3: Historical and visual evidence  

  • Explain the selected event
  • Integrate: avoid accidental causation claims unless supported
  • Clarify relationship (reflects? critiques? responds to?) 

Conclusion: Implication - why this author’s response is historically significant. 

  • Does it reinforce mainstream values?
  • Does it challenge dominant narratives?
  • Does this voice represent overlooked experiences?
  • Why does that matter for public commemoration?

This can be an in class writing assignment, or a final draft can be composed for homework. Circulate or offer mini-conferences with students as they develop their evidence-based argument. Quick self-check questions, peer reviews, and a standard-based rubric can guide revisions.

Self Check:

  • Is my claim arguable?
  • Does each piece of evidence clearly connect back to the claim?
  • Is there explanation between text and history?
  • Did I explain relationships clearly?

  • Did I accidentally claim direct causation? 

Peer Review:  

Ask students to read over a peer's work and underline: their claim, historical evidence, and literary quote.

  • Is the historical event clearly explained?
  • Does the quote connect to the claim?
  • Is the relationship reflect / critique / respond explained?

Assessment

Summative assessment occurs at the end of Day 5, with previous activities building toward it, ensuring students are ready to produce a polished evidence-based argument. A standards-based rubric is provided.

Extension/Further Study

Partner with a local library or historical society to research underrepresented Pennsylvania figures and propose an America250 commemoration idea. 

Align the assignment with the structure used in National History Day (exhibit board, documentary story board, website, performance monologue).

Contribute to the Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps by revising existing biographies or existing feature articles, or writing new content.

Create a digital timeline to share and build more broadly through continued study.

Related Lesson Plans

Secondary
Shape of Pennsylvania filled with multicolored speech bubbles.

Missing Voices: Biography

Explore the Cultural Heritage Map, research a figure, and compose a biographical essay.

PA Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps
Secondary
Pointing to a map.

Cultural Tour of Pennsylvania

Students design a regional tour of Pennsylvania in which they direct travelers to landmarks, features, and important cultural figures of the area.

PA Literary and Cultural Heritage Maps
Secondary
six different types of eyewear.

Perspectives in Primary Sources

Examine several photographs from ca. 1938 to initiate discussion of perspective, meaning making, and understanding.

Pittsburgh Hill District Learning Tool

References

Brugar, Kristy A. & Kathryn Roberts. “Timelines: An Opportunity for Meeting Standards through Textbook Reading,” The Social Studies, vol. 10, no.5, 2014. pp. 230-236, doi: 10.1080/00377996.2014.920288. 

Champagne, Marc. “Diagrams of the past: How timelines can aid the growth of historical knowledge.” Cognitive Semiotics, vol. 9, no. 1, 7 May 2016, pp. 11-44. doi: 10.1515/cogsem-2016-0002. 

Chapman, Tim. “Teaching Chronology through Timelines.” Teaching History, no. 73, 1993, pp. 25–29. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43257957. 

 “Create Active Learning with Timelines.” Quality Matters, www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/timeline-creation-tools.

Dennihy, Melissa. "Instructional Technology in the Literature Classroom: Using a Wiki to Construct an Interactive Time Line in an American Literature Survey Course." Pedagogy, vol. 17 no. 3, 2017, pp. 523-533. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/671059. 

Marcus, Robert D. “Nonreaders Anonymous: Reading History Collaboratively.” The History Teacher, vol. 33, no. 4, 2000, pp. 453–468. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/494942.

Ornstein, Avi. “Teaching History with a Timeline.” The Science Teacher, vol. 69, no. 3, 2002, pp. 69–70. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24154932.

 

Acknowledgement of Land

The Pennsylvania State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations.  As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.

Standards Objective(s) Vocabulary Materials and Resources Instructional Procedures Extension/Further Study Related Lesson Plans References