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One thing I love doing when teaching the difference between tenses is creating timelines. To me, a good tense timeline needs to follow a recipe:

- context: I often see timelines where students get nothing but random sentences. These can make it difficult for them to relate. Also, it makes grammar seem really distant from real life.

- live: it needs to be built in class, along with the student. Once the context is set, language can be presented in the form of examples which they can come up with themselves.

- less is more: if a timeline is too busy, it becomes distracting.

Here’s a demo lesson where I build a mixed verb tense timeline with a student. The ultimate goal was to discuss a text about the pandemic. It turned out, my warm up was a great opportunity to revise the use of different verb tenses, which she already knows.

And here’s us:

And here’s the final result:

What about you? Do you like timelines?