My life from birth to now and beyond

10 min

2. Invite students to arrange themselves in a line according to oldest to youngest. Indicate which end of the line is the oldest and which is the youngest. (An alternative if space does not allow would be to have students raise their hand or stand as the months of the year are called out).

Teaching tip:  Teachers may need to provide each student with their birthdate/birth day/month on a card to show and compare with each other.

Teaching tip:  Challenge the students to arrange themselves accurately within 2 minutes.  Make the activity more challenging by instructing the task is to be done in complete silence, similar to the silent card shuffle teaching strategy. 

3. Check and evaluate the students' success at arranging themselves in the correct order and encourage students to arrange themselves in correct date order, for each month.

4. Ask: 

   Are there any patterns in the line? Does the line have anything to do with height, gender, anything else?

   (No, age does not necessarily equate to height or any other differences in people). 

5. Discuss the results and talk about how everybody is approximately the same age but there is a lot of variation amongst the group in regard to physical traits, personalities and experiences.

6. Ask: 

   What does the word milestone mean?

   (Something important, an achievement, a goal, part of growing up, like walking, talking can be other things like first job, moving out. )

7. Explain that by identifying our personal milestones we get a sense of achievement and a stronger self of who we are or self-awareness.
8. Present each student with an electronic or hardcopy of the Student Activity Sheet: My Life chart 0-8. Ask students to think about the different elements (i.e. picture, approximate height, favourite foods, toys, what will be important to them, etc.) and what they can remember or recall for each over time. Some elements may need to be completed at home as a discussion between parents and students as the students may not recall the early years of their life.

Teaching tip: For the milestone, reminder a milestone is an achievement, goal all a part of growing up. They may want to write talking, walking or when they started school, when they learned to swim, or ride a bike. 

9. Have students write or draw for each element and bring photos to add (or they can draw themselves).
10. Provide them the opportunity to reflect and record the reasons they valued or enjoyed the elements they identified as favourites.

11. Ask:

    What things have not changed over your lifetime?

    What things did not change over your life? 

    How did you feel when something changed in your life (e.g. you got a new pet/moved house/changed schools/changed friends/moved interstate/arrived in Australia/new country)?

    (Scared, excited, nervous, nothing.) 

    What did you include as your milestones as you grew up?