Is there a YEAR ZERO?
What does CIRCA mean?
If a man was born in 17 B.C. and died in 27 A.D., about what age did he die?
Why do the 1800s make up the 19th century?
These are the kind of questions that I want my students to be able to answer, and they are examples of questions that often come up when studying the people and events of centuries ago. With my 5th grade GT classes, I learned that it was a good idea to discuss the tracking of TIME before we got too far into learning about ancient philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists.
I’ve searched for a free video lesson that addresses all of those specific questions but couldn’t find one, so I created the six-minute video below. It’s not sleek or professionally-produced, but it does answer those burning questions. You could use it as a guide for your own lesson or just share this video with your students. (NOTE: I did find this Khan Academy video, but if you share it, be sure to follow it with this one since it includes a correction to the first video.)
SETTING UP THE VIDEO
Prior to sharing this lesson, I would ask students what they know about the marking of time and timelines. Ask the questions above. You could even add questions about the meanings of B.C., A.D., B.C.E., and C.E. Students will probably have some prior understanding, but they may not be able to fully explain their answers to these questions. It’s always a good idea to find out what students know, or think they know, before sharing new information. Hopefully, this brief lesson will help to clarify concepts. You can also use this link to view this video.
My students kept Learning Logs and I had them draw timelines with some of the notations in the video as a follow-up to this lesson. You might also want to introduce students to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and its work in standardization across nations, including the standardizing of dates and time.
If you want to practice calculating years between dates B.C.E. and dates C.E., here is a calculator that may help!
Do you have something you can add to this about teaching the tracking of time to students? Leave a comment below! Also, if you like what you see on the site, and you’d like to see more, please subscribe. I’ll send regular updates directly to your inbox (NOTE: some school districts block mail from external sites not yet approved, so either use a personal email address or ask your school district to approve this site).