Creating timelines with this tool becomes an engaging activity for students as they choose from five different units of measure (date, time, event, entry, or other) and add specific descriptions of each entry. Once the entries have been added, students may navigate through any part of the timeline by simply clicking on the appropriate entry. Students may view and edit their draft timeline, then print the finished timeline for reference. This is a handy tool for classroom use that guides students through the process of organizing information in timeline form and results in a polished finished product.

See a sample horizontal Timeline for a student autobiography for details on what a student’s work might look like. For additional ideas on how to use this tool, see Tips for Using Timeline.

Visit this interactive tool at: http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/timeline/.

ReadWriteThink Lessons That Use This Tool

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative (6-8)
The old cliche "A picture is worth a thousand words" is put to the test in this lesson. Distribute or show a picture that tells a story and then encourage students to brainstorm words and ideas about the image before writing a story that tells background on the image or extends details on what has happened.

Biographies: Creating Timelines of a Life (3-5)
Studying biographies is of interest and value to young learners. This lesson supports students' exploration of sources to create a timeline about the life of a person. The experience requires students work together and research and resolve conflicting information. Extension activities include developing essays from the research.

Copyright Law: From Digital Reprints to Downloads (6-8)
In this lesson, students look briefly at the history of copyright law and generalize about how and why it has changed over time. Students then apply this information to recent copyright issues, look at these issues from the perspective of a particular group, and create persuasive arguments to convince others to see the issue from their perspective.

Cyberspace Explorer: Getting to Know Christopher Columbus (3-5)
Assisting young students in Web research is vital to their literacy development and gives them confidence as they approach digital text. In this lesson, based on the teaching strategies of Sutherland-Smith, teacher modeling and step-by-step handouts guide young explorers through a cyber scavenger hunt.

Discovering Memory: Li-Young Lee’s Poem “Mnemonic” and the Brain (6-8)
In this cross-curricular poetry and biology lesson, Li-Young Lee’s poem “Mnemonic” is used to explore how memory works. Students learn about memory by doing a memory-writing exercise, studying the brain to understand how it affects memory, reading Lee’s poem “Mnemonic,” and creating multigenre projects to demonstrate their understanding of memory.

Exploring Cross-Age Tutoring Activities With Lewis and Clark (9-12)
In this lesson, cross-age tutoring is a catalyst for interaction between high school and elementary students as they explore the journey of Lewis and Clark. Using the book How We Crossed the West and online interactive activities, students synthesize knowledge from collaborative sessions to write and share adventure stories.

Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran (9-12)
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students’ research efforts on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution. In groups, students research and then present information on aspects of Iran such as politics, religion, and culture.

Ghosts and Fear in Language Arts: Exploring the Ways Writers Scare Readers (9-12)
What is scary, and why does it fascinate us? How do writers and storytellers scare us? This lesson plan invites students to answer these questions by exploring their own scary stories and scary short stories and books. The lesson culminates in a Fright Fair, where students share scary projects that they have created, including posters, multimedia projects, and creative writing.

Having My Say: A Multigenre Autobiography Project (9-12)
Students will read Having Our Say, the autobiography of two African-American women who lived through most of the twentieth century.  Using this text as a model, students will produce a multigenre project that includes an autobiographical essay and an informational piece that provides historical, familial, or cultural context for their story.

Looking at Landmarks: Using a Picture Book to Guide Research (3-5)
Using the picture book Ben’s Dream as an inspiration, children put their research skills to work. The book illustrates ten landmarks from around the world, without identifying the names of the landmark. In their related inquiry, students learn more about the monuments presented in the book, publish information about them and share that knowledge with others.

Memories Matter: The Giver and Descriptive Writing Memoirs (6-8)
Using The Giver, students will discuss the importance of having a recorded history of humanity. This understanding provides context for descriptive writing of students’ own history in a lesson that integrates personal writing, research, and response to literature.

Myth and Truth: Independence Day (3-5)
Most Americans think of the Fourth of July as Independence Day—but is it really the day the U.S. declared and celebrated independence? By exploring myths and truths surrounding Independence Day, this lesson asks students to think critically about commonly believed stories regarding the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the Independence Day holiday.

Sequencing: A Strategy to Succeed at Reading Comprehension (3-5)
Students will strengthen comprehension of the Paul Bunyan tall tale by creating a life-sized timeline. Focusing on the sequence of events in the story, students each write a complete sentence and draw a picture illustrating a certain event and then as a class put these events in sequential order.

Thundering Tall Tales: Using Read-Aloud as a Springboard to Writing (3-5)
This lesson uses the Coretta Scott King Award book Thunder Rose to reinforce the common elements, or text structure, of tall tales. Reading this literature selection aloud supports students as they produce original tall tales for a culminating activity.

Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction (6-8)
Using an historical timeline and their prior knowledge of events, students predict when specific inventions were produced. After sharing their predictions in pairs/trios, they revise their timelines for accuracy, using Web resources. Through discussion, they consider the connections between historical events and when inventions were created.

Using Timeline Games and Mexican History to Improve Comprehension (3-5)
This lesson has students participate in a shared reading and conduct online research to gain an understanding of Mexican history. Students choose events, take notes on them, think about how to order them, and create a timeline. They then play a game to learn from each other's timelines.

Voting! What’s It All About? (3-5)
Students learn about the voting process through read-alouds, partner and independent reading, as well as guided Internet exploration of child-friendly Web sites. Students share information through writing and whole group discussions, explore the difference between fact and opinion, and create a large graffiti wall mural with information they’ve learned.

Weekly Writer’s Blogs: Building a Reflective Community of Support (9-12)
In this digital rethinking of the traditional weekly writer’s logs, students analyze example writer’s blog entries then begin the habit of writing their own reflective weekly entries, which focus on the writing that they have done over the past seven days.

Writing a Flashback and Flash-Forward Story Using Movies and Texts as Models (6-8)
Flashbacks and flash-forwards are common devices used in literature and films. Students will not only see examples of these devices through movies and stories, they will also create their own stories incorporating these literary devices.

Writing and Assessing an Autobiographical Incident (3-5)
An autobiographical incident, a story students can tell about an event in their own lives, can be a powerful teaching tool at the beginning of the school year. It is a wonderful way to introduce students to each other because the author shares experiences and feelings about an event.

Writing Workshop: Helping Writers Choose and Focus on a Topic (K-2)
In this lesson, students construct timelines as a way of choosing and focusing on a writing topic. Afterward, each student selects an event from the timeline, draws an illustration to further explore his or her thoughts, writes about the event in detail, and shares and confers during revisions.