Using Primary Sources in the Classroom
Through primary sources students confront two essential facts in studying history. First,
the record of historical events reflects the personal, social, political, or economic points of view of the
participants. Second, students bring to the sources their own biases, created by their own personal situations and the social environments in which they
live. As students use these sources, they realize that history exists through interpretation--and tentative interpretation at that.
Primary sources fascinate students because they are real and they are personal; history is humanized through them. Using original sources, students touch the lives of the people about whom history is written. They participate in human emotions and in the values and attitudes of the past. These human expressions provide history with color and excitement and link students directly to its cast of characters.
Interpreting historical sources helps students to analyze and evaluate contemporary sources--newspaper reports, television and radio programs, and advertising. By using primary sources, students learn to recognize how a point of view and a bias affect evidence, what contradictions and other limitations exist within a given source, and to what extent sources are reliable. Essential among these skills is the ability to understand and make appropriate use of many sources of information. Development of these skills is important not only to historical research but also to a citizenship where people are able to evaluate the information needed to maintain a free society.
Using Primary Sources to the Best Advantage
Students must use the primary source as a historical source. He or she must analyze its content, assess its significance, and in the process become his or her own historian. This form of historical instruction should provide students with the skills of a historian: posing significant questions; locating sources; subjecting the data to critical analysis; synthesizing diverse materials; and expressing the results in a readable, convincing way.
In the development of these skills, a substantial amount of class time should be devoted to the task. The effort should be continuous and it should permit work on an individual basis.
Disadvantages of Using Primary Sources
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The method is time consuming
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Students need to gain a general understanding of historical development which sources alone cannot provide.
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The documents are too numerous.
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The quantity of original materials to be used can be restricted.
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Sources can be one-sided and thus prevent a full consideration of opposing views.
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Primary Sources supplement but cannot replace the textbook/lecture.
Where to Find Primary Sources
To introduce students to primary sources, you might begin with materials that they themselves possess, such as birth certificates, social security cards, passports, or drivers' licenses.
What do these sources tell us about the individuals and the society in which they live?
How might these sources be used by historians?
Consider how school, employment, medical, and family records could be used to develop generalizations about twentieth-century student life.
Beyond personal records, there are a variety of other sources available.
Where can you locate documentation on your neighborhood or community?
Your sources can be both governmental and private: Federal census figures, newspapers, local government files, personal diaries, and interviews with long-time residents. In most cities and towns, local historical groups, preservation societies, and museums serve as excellent starting points for classes locating documentary materials about local communities. On the provincial level, historical societies, archives, and museums are valuable depositories for useful primary materials. Many of these agencies offer specific programs for high school students, and many would welcome suggestions for joint projects.
Local resources and teacher imagination are enough.
When students and teachers participate together in the exciting and evolving process of historical inquiry, returns, in terms of knowledge, skills and interest, can be great and lasting.
Adapted Sources:
National Archives and Records Administration, History in the Raw
http://www.archives.gov/education/history-in-the-raw.html
Tuning In: Primary Sources in the Teaching of History, Gerald A. Danzer and Mark Newman (World History Project, University of Chicago, 1991), pp. 5, 7-9, and 11.
Creative Ideas for Using Primary Sources in the Classroom
Exhibition Curator
Choose a theme. Create a classroom exhibition or bulletin board to explore the theme with a variety of primary sources. Use oral history quotations for the labels.
Gallery Walk
Post a series of primary sources on the wall with a set of questions at each station. Move from station to station in groups to answer the questions at each station. Continue the walk until everyone has had a chance to
work with all the sources.
Information Age
Some cultures have relied on oral tradition as the primary means of communication; others, letter writing; some email. Investigate how people have recorded and shared information in other times and places. How do you communicate? What evidence will remain for historians of the future? Illustrate your findings on a map or timeline.
Newspaper Reporter
Extrapolate the five "W" questions from a primary source. Use the answers to write a lead paragraph for a news story.
Time Capsule
Create a time capsule to represent life today. Select objects, documents, pictures and other sources that could teach people in the future about what life is like today.
"What is it?" Game
Create a source box filled with primary and secondary resources. Sort them into primary and secondary sources. This activity can be done as a relay race.
Who is it?
Ask a group of teachers to create a bag of primary sources from their lives (one per teacher). Students can work in groups to match the bag with the teacher and draw conclusions about the person based on the sources. Share and justify the conclusions. Use this as a way to introduce the different types of primary sources.
DOCUMENTS
A Family Manuscript
Bring in a diary, letter or other document from home. Examine each to personalize and find out more about a particular event or time period.
Document Comparison
Identify the purpose of specific documents and compare them to one another (e.g. Charter of Rights and Freedoms, British North America Act, etc.).
English Professor
Look at an old document (a letter, diary, etc.) as an example of writing.
Critique it. Is it an example of good writing? Grade it according to today's standards. How do you think language has changed?
Fact vs. Fiction
Use primary sources to authenticate the information and storyline in a work of historical fiction. The book's bibliography will provide sources useful for authentication. How would you change the novel to make it more historically accurate?
Family Tree
Interview family members and examine family documents (e.g. your baby book) to construct a family tree.
Found Poem
Create a "found poem" with excerpts from an oral history or document. Everyone should work with the same source. Ask each student to jot down the four most poignant phrases from the source on large strips of paper. Work together in groups to combine the phrases into a poem. If more than one person selects the same line, it might be used as a title or refrain.
Letters Home
Read and analyze letters about a topic from two opposing viewpoints. Describe the differences and similarities in the information and the opinions they convey.
Eyewitness News
Choose an event or time period that all students have witnessed. Ask each person to write an account of the event. Compare them to find the differences and similarities in accounts. See how differing perspectives affect how people view and record an event.
Voices
Read a speech from the past to introduce a new unit.
Pen Pals
Explore the value of letters as primary sources by writing to a pen pal. Explore ways to use the Internet to partner with a class in another region of the country or the world on a pen pal program.
An Ensemble of Voices
Divide into groups "expert groups" and assign each group a source with a different account of the same event or time period to study using a series of guide questions. Then move to "discussion groups;" each discussion group should include a student from each one of the "expert groups." Share information from the different primary sources and, as a group, develop generalizations about the event or time period using all sources.
Voice from the Past
To help students decipher the handwriting in old letters, diaries, and other documents, make a tape recording of the document you will be studying. As students listen to the recording, have them follow the wording of the document.
Walk a Mile in Another Person's Shoes
Choose a person, country, or idea to represent in a discussion of a particular issue. Examine a primary source from that person, country, or idea and use it to prepare a position statement for a debate, talk show or presentation.
What's Your Line?
Choose a quotation or idea from a famous figure in history to stimulate a position-taking activity or a debate on a particular issue in history.
MAPS
Cartographer's Comparison
Compare a recent and an historic map of a particular place to see how the place has evolved over time.
Walking to School
Create a primary source to document your own community. Make a map of your walk or ride to school. What do you pass along the way? How far do you travel? What route do you take? What are the strengths and weaknesses of maps as sources of information about the past?
Adapted Sources:
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Encountering Maryland's Past: A Teacher's Guide to Interpreting Primary Sources
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A Primary Source Kit from the Maryland Historical Society
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Using Primary Sources in the Classroom: Creative Ideas for Maryland Teachers
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