Primary Sources in the classroom
What ARE Primary Sources, anyway?
Primary sources are documents or objects created during the time being studied.
Secondary sources, on the other hand, examine and/or analyze the primary source materials.
What are examples of primary sources?*
Historians and other scholars have been very inventive in identifying and utilizing a wide-range of primary sources, especially when attempting to write the histories of groups and individuals that have been excluded from access to formal written records. The following are examples of primary sources when they are used to answer questions about the time or place in which they were produced.
- photographs
- letters
- artifacts
- diaries
- works of art such as paintings/sculptures/quilts
- fiction
- poetry
- journals
- autobiographies
- music and songs
- memoirs
- cartoons
- census records
- broadsides
- court or government records
- immigration records
- drawings
- maps from the place or time
- ships' logs
- ledger books
- labor records
- recorded oral histories and people speaking for themselves
- texts or recordings of speeches
- architectural landmarks
- charts/graphs
- sound recordings
- documentary film
*List taken from: "What is a Primary Source?." Primary Source. 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. <http://www.primarysource.org/what-is-a-primary-source>.
Why Use Primary Sources?*
Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period.
Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a very real sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era.
1. Engage students
- Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events.
- Because primary sources are snippets of history, they encourage students to seek additional evidence through research.
- First-person accounts of events helps make them more real, fostering active reading and response.
2. Develop critical thinking skills
- Many state standards support teaching with primary sources, which require students to be both critical and analytical as they read and examine documents and objects.
- Primary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple primary sources to find patterns.
- In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials.
- Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions.
3. Construct knowledge
- Inquiry into primary sources encourages students to wrestle with contradictions and compare multiple sources that represent differing points of view, confronting the complexity of the past.
- Students construct knowledge as they form reasoned conclusions, base their conclusions on evidence, and connect primary sources to the context in which they were created, synthesizing information from multiple sources.
- Integrating what they glean from comparing primary sources with what they already know, and what they learn from research, allows students to construct content knowledge and deepen understanding.
*Taken from: "Why use Primary Sources." Library of Congress. US Government, Web. 30 Oct. 2013. <http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/whyuse.html>.
Where can I find primary sources?
One great resources for primary sources is the Library of Congress. They have a whole teacher section on their site.
HERE is an issue of the TPSJ from fall 2012 that focuses on Primary Sources and the CCSS.
HERE is a link to the Primary Source Nexus which works with the Libarary of Congresss through a grant initiative
The National Archives has a section called DocsTeach with thousands of primary source documents for use in the classroom and tools for teaching using their resources.
The website Primary Source has a Resource and Curriculum Guides section. Not all the resources are online, but they do have extensive lists of materials and embedded videos.
Often there will also be primary source documentation at the end of a book, such as a list of quotes or a list of documents (e.g., letters or transcripts) that authors used.
Interested in learning more about using the Library of Congress materials in your classroom?
NCCE offers a two-day session in Oregon every summer about using the LOC in the classroom! AND IT'S FREE!!!!! Dates and place have not yet been decided for the 2014 sessions, but you can sign up to get on the mailing list to get updates.
This information was put together by Erin Fitzpatrick-Bjorn, the K-8 District Media Coordinator for the Gresham Barlow School District.
Email: fitzpatrick@gresham.k12.or.us
Website: http://tinyurl.com/GBSDlibraries
Phone: