This is a very simple idea that is immensely valuable.

You use your pupils to create a human timeline – one student per century from the birth of Christ to today. This human timeline then becomes the vehicle for exploring a wide range of aspects of chronological understanding – there’s over a dozen variations described below but regular use with your own classes will prompt more ideas.

Timelines are a staple component of work on chronology but there’s often the danger of students being passive observers of timelines – and passive observation is unlikely to lead to any lasting learning. The most productive timeline work involves children physically and mentally, whether it’s measuring out the duration of historical periods in the school playground or creating the labels ‘Tudor’ or ‘Victorian’ and researching where they go on a timeline.

This activity is part of that ‘thinking for yourself’ approach to timelines. A critical part of its success will be the sense of involvement and enjoyment you create amongst your pupils by using period hats, tabards, period labels and a range of props and pictures, all of which will make this into a strongly visual activity and make it enjoyable and memorable. ‘Memorability’ is vital - if students don’t remember an activity they can’t re-use what they’ve covered.

Three other introductory points:

1. This isn’t a one-off activity. Many aspects of ‘chronology’ need Rapid, Regular, Reinforcement so keep using this with students at regular intervals. The more children get used to it the more they’ll learn from it.

2. This is best seen as a whole school project and resource to which a range of teachers contribute – in terms of collecting props and hats, making period labels and tabards and planning its use across the whole of KS2 so that you keep building up the activity across the Key Stage and so pupils gain more from the basic activity each time it’s used. Teamwork at its best!

3. Building a timeline around centuries may seem difficult when children still have to develop a strong sense of what the duration of a century is. It’s defined as a hundred years but that will not mean a great deal in reality to a 9 year-old. However the same issue still applies to teenagers and even 20-somethings who will have a stronger numerical sense of a century but still have difficulty imagining the reality of its duration. Basically in developing an understanding of the duration of a century you have to start somewhere and allow children to begin to grasp that it’s a long time, even longer than granny has lived. In fact granny can be very helpful as it’s a useful rule of thumb in KS2 that 2 grannies equals a century (though whether you can get two grannies to lie down end to end to represent a century may be unlikely!). More important than worrying about their grasp of a century is to develop understanding of the sequence and comparative duration of historical periods and allow the sense of a century to develop gradually.

And a final thought:

Don’t underestimate the power of this activity just because it’s in essence very simple.

For more …

… of this resource, by Ian Dawson (including setup, uses, suggestions for props, a blank timeline and some period labels) visit Ian's own Thinking History website [ here ]