Primary sources have been part of my history teaching for a long time. Reading words from the past makes history pop in ways that secondary sources often only hint at. But only recently have I remembered how incomprehensible such sources can initially appear to our students.
This summer, I took an online course on the history of emancipation during the Civil War. For the first week’s assignment, I read the primary sources before the secondary accounts and found myself confused by the order and content of events, looking up question after question online.
I was also brought up short by the 19th-century language. It was comprehensible, but barely, and only if I read several degrees more slowly than usual. Abraham Lincoln’s language, especially, asked for contemplation. The documents by Lincoln that I knew from years of teaching seemed straightforward: his First and Second Inaugurals, the Emancipation Proclamation. But I realized as I read unfamiliar sources, these speeches were straightforward only because I already knew them.
My own struggle has made me think about how we teach primary sources to our own students. When should we give context beforehand, and when should we encourage students to muddle through difficult language themselves?
Why are primary sources important?
For students, it seems that the best question we can ask is: Why are wespending time on this source? Is it for the language, argument, sense ofplace, chronology, or something else? Once we have the goal in mind,we can decide on timing and methods. What I’ve remembered most fromreading primary sources this summer are the visceral moments – when Iwas surprised, as with Dred Scott, or challenged, as with the first week’sreadings on military and legal emancipation.
Surprise and challenge: not a bad place to begin. Let’s explore some classroom-based and digital activities that teachers can try.
Classroom-Based Activities
Optics
Purpose: To help students analyze visual sources, such as photographs or political cartoons.
- Objects: Find three objects in the image. Try to find one your classmates will not see.
- People: Describe the people in the image
- Title or Time Period: Provide title or time of image
- Inference: Because I see ___, I can infer that…
- Conclusion: The most important thing in this image is ____ because it sends the message that…
- Summary: Provide a stem to help summarize the image. Stems will vary based on the image
Cartoon Shuffle
Purpose: To help students summarize sources and sequence information.
- Select a reading passage. Divide reading into “chunks” if needed. Do NOT have more than six paragraphs or chunks of information for students to read.
- Give each student an index card for each paragraph.
- Have students read the first chunk silently. On the index card, students sketch a quick cartoon that summarizes the main idea of what they just read.
- Continue this process until the entire text has been read and students have drawn.
- Have students give the cards to a partner. The partner shuffles the cards and returns them to the owner.
- Students must arrange the cartoon cards in the order of the reading and explain it to their partner
- OPTIONAL: Ask students to write a summary of the reading.
Turn Up the Radio!
Purpose: To help students comprehend sources and practice listening/speaking skills.
- Select a short primary source. Select one that is not too difficult to read.
-
Place students in groups of 2-3. One student becomes the “radio,” who will read the primary source aloud.
-
Teachers will give the radio a text to read and have the other students listen.
- Go over the rules BEFORE the activity. Rules might include:
- Watch the speaker
- Ask the speaker to slow down if they are reading too fast
- Ask the speaker to repeat a sentence if you didn’t hear it
-
Have the radio read one chunk or paragraph of the text at a time.
- Each time the radio stops reading, the other students summarize what they just heard. Give sentence starters:
- “What I heard you say was…”
- “The main idea of this primary source was…”
-
The radio will then confirms the summary of the text and makes corrections as needed.
- Repeat until the text is complete.
Primary-Source Activities
Debating the Documents
Activity Type: Image Analysis
Students apply their primary source interpretation skills to think like historians as they analyze sources, debate points of view, and write short essays for document-based questions (one visual pair, one text pair with differing views, along with analysis questions and background information in U.S. and world history).
Available in both United States and world history, purchase here.
Document-Based Assessments
Activity Type: Reading
To prepare students to write essay answers to document-based questions (DBQs), this United States and world history series guides students step by step through the analysis of primary and secondary source quotations. Topics range from ancient Greece to the spread of Islam, European colonization, the Industrial Revolution, imperialism in India and Africa, and the decolonization and independence movements of 1945–1975. For each topic, students are helped in the interpretation of half a dozen quotes, while teachers are provided with specific answer keys, a scoring rubric for the essays, and (sometimes) sample essays with suggested grades.
Global history workbook available here. United States history workbook available here.
Great Documents in U.S. History
Activity Type: Reading
Students become acquainted with the process of primary source analysis by examining significant slices of American history. Obvious choices such as the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and Wilson’s Fourteen Points are joined by less-covered selections, including Dix’s speech on conditions for the mentally ill, Chinese exclusion policy, and the censure of Joe McCarthy. Each activity provides a short essay on a specific document’s historical context; its importance; the full or excerpted text; necessary vocabulary; comprehension, critical thinking, and essay questions; and writing prompts for making connections and relating the past to students’ lives.
Start using primary sources from great documents now. Get workbook here.
Get a free trial of Active Classroom and explore more primary sources to support your secondary social studies students
Sarah Cooper teaches eighth-grade U.S. history and is co-dean of faculty at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, California. She lives just outside Los Angeles with her husband and two sons, both in elementary school. She is the author of Making History Mine (Stenhouse, 2009) and writes and reviews books for MiddleWeb.