How Actions Live in Time – Visual Timeline for Teaching Tenses

A colourful classroom poster designed to help students understand how actions relate to time before introducing or revising verb tenses. The timeline shows the past, present and future, with short/complete actions marked as points and longer actions shown as actions in progress or duration.
Each action is labelled with a letter, so the poster can be reused for classroom discussion and questions such as: Which action happened first? Which action was in progress when another action happened? Which actions happen before, after or during others?
It is especially useful when teaching or revising Simple, Continuous and Perfect forms, as well as before, after, while, when and by the time. The poster deliberately avoids naming specific tenses, so teachers can adapt it to different grammar lessons and levels.
Suggested level: A2–B1, but adaptable for younger or stronger learners.

Can be displayed on screen, printed as a classroom poster, or used as a discussion prompt.

Concept, educational design & content: Zoe Anagnostopoulou, Say Yes!
Illustrations created with AI assistance using ChatGPT (OpenAI), under the author’s direction.