Do your students struggle to keep history dates and events straight? I’ve created this free 13 Colonies timeline activity to help your students gain a deeper understanding of the history of the 13 Colonies.
Why Use Timelines?
Timelines Strengthen Student Comprehension
Analyzing timelines provides opportunities for students to deepen comprehension. As students see, discuss, use, and create timelines, they strengthen comprehension skills like:
- Summarizing the most important details of an event/topic in history
- Recognizing cause and effect through events in history
- Sequencing events in chronological order
- Comparing and contrasting the course of different events in history
Visual Representation Increases Student Retention
Dr. Lynell Burmark has said that “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information… Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”
A famous Chinese Proverb reads,
“What I hear, I forget;
What I see, I remember;
What I do, I understand.”
According to Edgar Dale’s Cone of Excellence, students are able to retain:
- 10% of what they read
- 20% of what they hear
- 30% of what they see
- 50% of what they see and hear
- 70% of what they say and write
- 90% of what they do as they perform a task
So what does all of this research have to do with timelines?
Well, a timeline is a visual representation of the information students are learning. Creating this image for students will build a deeper connection in their memory, leading to greater comprehension and retention.
Tips for Using Timelines in Your Classroom
- First, create activities with timelines that include analysis, discussion, and writing.
- Second, use timelines in a variety of ways.
- Focus on a single event (like a significant battle during a war). As you analyze the smaller details within this one event, your students can see how one event can bring about big change.
- Look at the bigger picture. Place several events on a timeline and see how they fit together over a greater period of time.
- Third, have students create their own timelines. This allows students the opportunity to research a topic, analyze and determine which information is the most important, and use their creativity to put it together in a visual way.
- Fourth, display a timeline somewhere in your room that you update over the course of the entire school year (or term). This can be done as a whole class. As new events are learned, students add them to the timeline! Be sure to only include the most important events – and add images to make it more meaningful.
Free 13 Colonies Timeline Activity
In this free 13 Colonies timeline activity, students will learn who founded each of the original colonies, when the colony was founded, and why the colony was settled.
Students will get up and out of their seats as they search for task cards around the room. With each task card, students will discover important historical facts about each colony and place the colonies in order of settlement on a timeline.
I have also included a reflection sheet for early finishers!
Download Your FREE 13 Colonies Timeline Activity
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