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Summaries · Grade 6 History › Sources and timelines
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Sources and timelines

Primary and secondary sources, bias, reliability, timelines, centuries and the abbreviations BC, AD, BCE and CE. Read one part at a time and tap “I know this”. Then test yourself in the quiz.

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Kinds of sources

SourceKind
A piece of old pot dug upArchaeological (an artefact: made and used by people)
An elder who grew up thereOral: important in Africa, where knowledge was told
An official recordCarefully kept at the time
A newspaper cartoonA drawing that gives an opinion

A fact can be checked; an opinion cannot. History books change because new sources are found.

Primary and secondary sources.
Primary and secondary sources.
Tap when you could tell someone without looking.

Time

17thcentury1601–170018thcentury1701–180019thcentury1801–190020thcentury1901–200021stcentury2001–21001652 falls in the 17th century; 1750 in the 18th century.
1652 is in the seventeenth century; 1994 in the 1990s (a decade).
Rule

Century = 100 years, millennium = 1 000 years. 1488 comes before 1652.

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Remember this and test yourself

Remember this: your summary
  • Primary: from the time itself (a 1994 ballot paper). Secondary: written later.
  • Ask who wrote the source: the writer’s interest can colour it (bias).
  • More reliable when independent sources agree; less reliable when it contradicts all the others or exaggerates.
  • Chronological order: events in the order they happened.
  • BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord”); or BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era): the numbers stay the same. Years BC count backwards: 400 BC is older than 100 BC.

Write these points in your book. Read them again the night before the test.

Memory trick

Primary = first-hand (was there). Secondary = second-hand (told later).

Flash cards · Tap to turn over

Important words

First say what the word means, then turn the card over.

Test yourself · Part 2

True or false?

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