History Timeline Project

Timelines are a helpful way for students to organize facts, people and events and to visualize how certain events impacted those that followed. By using the Storyboard That Creator to construct a timeline, students go beyond simply memorizing dates and are able to think critically about how to illustrate and describe important events.

This example highlights a few of the important dates leading up to the The Vietnam War, however, any topic could be used! Teachers could have students create timelines of specific historical periods that they are studying. They could illustrate the progression of a topic through the ages such as the history of voting rights or the history of the printing press! Timelines could be used in ELA to show the progression of events throughout a story or a biography of a person's life. The possibilities are endless!

For an alternative to the timeline layout, have students create a timeline poster or a worksheet sized timeline to incorporate into a presentation or gallery walk. You can add more than one template to this assignment to give students lots of options and adjust the instructions accordingly.

Due Date:

Objective: Create a timeline in chronological order with accurate dates, descriptions. and illustrations for 10 important events relating to your topic.

Student Instructions:

1. Click “Start Assignment”.
2. Choose 5-10 important events related to your topic.
3. In the timeline template, click on “Timeline Dates”, and write the dates of each milestone in the date cells in chronological order. Then click “update timeline”.
4. For each cell, write a title at the top and write a 3-5 sentence description at the bottom for each event.
5. Create an illustration that represents each event using appropriate scenes, characters, and items.
6. Save and exit when you're finished.

Requirements: 10 events listed with correct dates, 3-5 sentence description and appropriate illustration.