CREATING A TIMELINE WITH TIMETOAST

 

Creating a timeline is in my opinion very useful and helpful when reading a text.

After reading a text on the life of Shakespeare students are asked to create a timeline.

In order to do do so, they must understand the main events of his life. With this activity, my aim is for them to realise that they do not need to understand every single detail of the text but the most significant events of the life of Shakespeare. Besides, by adding images they will find it easier to remember important information.

They also learn to organise events in chronological order and I am sure that the use of Timetoast will be easy for them.

This is a very interesting task when reading not only a biography but a narrative too.  It helps them learn and separate the sequence of events.

I would also like to work this activity the other way round. That is, I give them the timeline and they must write a story or a biography from those events, so that’s another way of working on their writing skills. Another activity with Timetoast that could be interesting in the classroom would be for the students to prepare a presentation orally  (a biography, a historical event, etc)and a timeline that would show their classmates while speaking, so the rest of the class would find it much easier to understand it.

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/2433408

The text from which I have created the timeline is the following:
William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd of April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England. His father was a glove maker, and they were not poor. His father became an important person in the town. William was the eldest boy in the family, so he had to help his father. One day, he went to a market with his younger brother, Edmund. Edmund slipped because it was muddy, and a young woman helped him to stand up. Her name was Anne Hathaway. After this meeting at the market, William and Anne fell in love, and they married in 1582. Anne gave birth to their first child, Susanna, in 1583. At first, William and Anne lived with William’s parents, but they moved to another house in 1584. Their son Hamnet, was born in 1585, but sadly he died when he was only eleven. In 1587 William moved to London. He asked his brother to look after his wife and children, and he sent money home to Stratford and visited when he could. During his career, he worked as an actor, and he also wrote thirty seven plays: seventeen comedies, ten histories and ten tragedies, as well as poems. Shakespeare became rich and famous, and he had enough money to buy an expensive house in Stratford, called ‘New Place’. His company of actors had enough money for a new theatre, The Globe, built in 1599. During a play in 1613, a fire started and The Globe burnt down. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but Shakespeare seems to have written less in the years after the accident. William only came back to Stratford for the last five years of his life. He died on his birthday, aged 52, in 1616, and was buried in a church in Stratford. His daughter Susanna inherited most of his money and possessions.