What is a Timeline?

Academic Skills

Since ancient times people have used a variety of devices  to tell the time and date. People use clocks, watches, and calendars to tell the time and date.
Time is measured by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years.
There are many words that we use to talk about time. Words that talk about the PRESENT (now), the PAST (what happened before now), and the FUTURE (what will happen after now).
When we say words like today, this minute or this hour, we are talking about the present.
When we say like yesterday, last Monday, last month, last year, three years ago, one hundred years ago or one thousand years ago…we are talking about things that happened in the past.
When we say words like tomorrow, next week, next year, next Tuesday, in two months, or next month, we are talking about the future.
When we study HISTORY, we are studying about events that happened in the past. And people that lived in the past.
One way to study history is to make a timeline. We study events and their DATES and put them on a line to show in what order the events happened. We put the events in order by time.
We can put events in order by years or months, or even days.  When we put events that happened in the past on a timeline we are putting them in CHRONOLOGICAL order; we are making a CHRONOLOGY.
 CHRONO is an Greek word that means “time” and LOGIS is a word that means “to study”. So, a chronology means a study of time or a study of the time order of events.
Here’s a timeline that shows the events in order for a single day.  It starts with the first event at the earliest time (get up) and shows events and the hours that they occurred throughout the day.
Example 1:
This type of timeline is called a HORIZONTAL timeline because it goes from left to right—like reading a book.
What happened at 11:00?
  
Example 2:
The next timeline (next page) shows the names of some kings and when they ruled and what happened while they were in charge. The dates go from top to bottom. This is called a VERTICAL timeline.
 
What happened in 1349?
 
Now you try to make some timelines!.
 
 Put these times into chronological order along the timeline below
 
10:55a.m.
10:57a.m.
2:00p.m.
3:25p.m.
3:35p.m.
9:05a.m.
8:35a.m.
8:00a.m.
 
   
Now put these dates into chronological order along the timeline below
 
1837
1649
1914
2001
1958
1550
1216
1066
1372
1536
1452
 
 
Academic Skills