Timeline Projects: Listen to News

Happy New Year! Are you looking for an interesting project idea to try with your English learners this year? Why not try a Timeline project?

Here are a few examples:

• world news timeline (e.g., for a birth year or the year that just passed)
• personal timeline of my life
• personal timeline in comparison to word news
• timeline of our class or school
• timeline of a famous person or event
• prediction timeline (e.g., What might happen this year.)

Timelines can be useful for:

• practising the past tense
• summarizing information
• comparing and contrasting
• combining visual and print media
• presenting in front of an audience
• writing in chart format
• organizing information

Be sure to check out Pinterest for timeline presentation and project ideas.

EnglishClub’s News Archives

EnglishClub’s Listen to News resource has archives that date back to 2007. This resource can be very useful when it comes to creating timelines that relate to news and historical events. Why not have your students compare their own lives to events that happened around the world? Below is an example timeline entry for a comparison timeline between a student’s life and the world news.

In 2007, the world’s tiniest baby was released from the hospital four months after her birth. Tiny Amelia Taylor weighed 10 ounces at birth. That same year, my cousin Ellie gave birth to a baby boy. Marco weighed 9 pounds and spent only 5 hours in the hospital. What a difference!

A timeline project can also be completed online on a blog or webpage. Encourage your students to include links to the media sources they used or to articles that contain more information.