Timeline of Key Events
History · Year 1–Year 6
Pick an era, tap a date, and the board says what happened.
About the timeline
One era at a time, drawn to a real scale. Pick the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, the Victorians or the twentieth century, and the track is redrawn for that span. Tap a date and the board says what happened, with one line about it underneath.
The scale is honest, and that is the point of it. Year to position is straight, so two events three years apart sit three years apart on the board and a long quiet stretch looks long and quiet. Stretching a cluster out to make room for the writing would draw a false picture of time, so the events sit above and below the track instead.
It opens on the dates with no names on them, because the question a timeline asks is about order. Tap Hide and the dates go too, which is the harder version: what happened, and roughly when.
People are here as the things they did. Boudicca's revolt, Darwin's book and Rosa Parks staying in her seat are events on a date, because that is what a timeline holds: a person is not a point in time.
How to use it on your whiteboard
- 1Pick an era on the toolbar. The track is redrawn to that span.
- 2Tap a date on the track. What happened appears above or below it, and the line underneath says more.
- 3Tap Next to work along the era in order, or All to put every event up at once.
- 4Tap Hide to take the dates off, and ask the class when each thing happened.
Questions
- Why are the events not evenly spaced?
- Because they did not happen evenly. The gap on the board is the gap in years, so the Romans' first twenty years look busy and the next three hundred look quiet, which is true.
- Can I add my own events?
- Not yet. The four eras cover the KS2 units, and every event on them is one a scheme of work asks for.
- Why is there no BC?
- Every era here is after AD 43. Crossing zero needs the number line's treatment of negatives, and none of these eras needs it.