What are the primary sources in relation to the past events?
It's important to keep in mind that the idea of "primary sources" doesn't just mean "writing." A photograph can be a primary source. A physical object (anything from an architectural structure to a piece of jewelry to a milk bottle) can also be a primary source. Show In fact, in the article "How Objects Speak," while discussing a pair of 17th century scholars who researched Egyptian gnostic gems, author Peter Miller observes: This was not a subject nor an inquiry that pre-existed them: It was from objects that the scholars derived their questions, and they followed them wherever they led, conquering difficult sources of different kinds along the way. So keep in mind that physical objects, as preserved pieces of real history, can often be the items which inspire your historical questions in the first place, spurring your research process to begin. Primary sources are the raw materials of history — original documents and objects that were created at the time under study. They are different from secondary sources, accounts that retell, analyze, or interpret events, usually at a distance of time or place. Why teach with primary sources?Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era. Helping students analyze primary sources can also prompt curiosity and improve critical thinking and analysis skills. Primary sources expose students to multiple perspectives on significant issues of the past and present. In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials. Interacting with primary sources engages students in asking questions, evaluating information, making inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues. Before you beginSuccessful student interactions with primary sources require careful primary source selections and lesson planning.
Engage students with primary sourcesPrimary 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 incomplete snippets of history, each one represents a mystery that students can only explore further by finding new pieces of evidence. Ask students to observe each primary source.
Encourage students to think about their response to the source.
Promote student inquiryInquiry 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. Encourage students to speculate about each source, its creator, and its context.
Ask if this source agrees with other primary sources, or with what the students already know. Assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sourcesPrimary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple resources to find patterns and construct knowledge. Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions.
Offer students opportunities to demonstrate their learning by writing an essay, delivering a speech taking a stand on an issue in the primary sources, or creating a museum display about a historical topic. For more follow-up activity ideas, take a look at the general or format-specific teacher's guides. What are the primary sources in history?Primary sources are original materials, regardless of format. Letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, and sound or video recordings are examples of primary sources created as a time or event is occurring.
Why are primary sources helpful to understand events of the past?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.
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