Susan Guan

The Short Form Lesson Planner

Content Area: History-Social Studies Timelines ______________
Lesson Length: ___45___ minutes
Content Standards:
CCSS-H-SS 2.1.3 Place important events in their lives in the order in which they occurred (e.g., on a time
line or storyboard.)
Learning Objective/Goal:
Students will learn how to place events in order on a timeline.
The Lesson Plan
Introduction (2 min.):.
Tell students that today we are going to learn how to place events that happen in our lives on a timeline.
Ask students if they have every heard of a timeline before and what they know about a timeline.
Body (40 minutes):
Model: (10 minutes)
Tell students that a timeline is used to show the order in which things and events have happened.
Show an example of a timeline under the document camera. Ask students to take a look at the timeline
and look at the different parts of the timeline. Ask students to think about what different parts and features
they notice about the timeline. Tell students to pair share what parts they notice on the timeline.
Call on students to share the different parts of a timeline. Write down the parts of a timeline as students
share their observations.
Tell students that a timeline is used to order important events in someones life. For example, in this
sample timeline we can see that Eric is born in 1997. There are also other important events in his life such
as Eric getting a puppy and Eric starting school.
Ask students to think about how these events are ordered. What pattern do they notice about the ordering
of these important events? Emphasize the importance of beginning a timeline on the left side with the
earliest event and then moving towards the right with more recent events.
Guided Practice: (10 minutes)
Tell students that they will now help you with making a timeline all about you. Tell students that you are
going to present four different events that happened in your life and they will have to help you organize
those events into a timeline.
Present each event to students. Ask students to think about the events and when each of these events
occurred. Call on students to come up to the board and order each event in order in the form of a timeline.
As students come up to order the events on the timeline, use questioning to emphasize the different
components of a timeline and how timelines are organized and created.
Independent Practice (20 minutes)
Tell students that they will now get a chance to create their own timelines. Students will need to think
about four different events that they want to order on their timeline.

Ask students to think about what are some examples of important events that happened in their life. As a
class, create a chart of some examples of events. Call on students to share examples of important events
in their lives.
Tell students that they will receive a worksheet and on that worksheet they will be able to brainstorm and
write down ideas of important events that happened in their life. Pass out a brainstorming worksheet for
students to plan the four events that they want to include in their timeline.
Tell students that once they have finished planning for their timelines with four events from their life,
they will need to order those events and then present their brainstorming paper to me. After I have
checked their timeline events and the order of their events, students will receive four blank cards for them
to create their timeline events.
Tell students that once they finish the four timeline cards, they will receive a timeline strip where they
will glue on their four events in order.
Closure (_3_minutes): Describe how you will prompt the students to summarize the lesson and restate
the learning objective.
Ask students to share one thing that they learned about timelines.