Primary Sources: Unlocking Student Voices: Instructional Ideas

Drawing on student's prior knowledge.

Ask students to closely observe each primary source.

• Who created this primary source?
• When was it created?
• Where does your eye go first?

Help students see key details.

• What do you see that you didn’t expect?
• What powerful words and ideas are expressed?

Encourage students to think about their personal response to the source.

• What feelings and thoughts does the primary source trigger in you?
• What questions does it raise?

*Information retreived from Library of Congress

Encourage students to speculate about each source, its creator, and its context.

• What was happening during this time period?
• What was the creator’s purpose in making this primary source?
• What does the creator do to get his or her point across?
• What was this primary source’s audience?
• What biases or stereotypes do you see?

Ask if this source agrees with other primary sources, or with what the students already know.

• Ask students to test their assumptions about the past.
• Ask students to find other primary or secondary sources that offer support or contradiction.

*Information retreived from Library of Congress

Have students summarize what they’ve learned.

• Ask for reasons and specific evidence to support their conclusions.
• Help students identify questions for further investigation, and develop strategies for how they might answer them.

*Information retreived from Library of Congress

Warm up Activities

Use primary sources as an anticipatory set

Students write a short answer/response

Think-Pair-Share

Primary Source of the Day - use to review yesterday's lesson or transition to a new topic

Writing Activities

Personal reflections/journals/blogs

Analysis of primary source

Develop research plan based on primary source

Compare/Constrast primary sources and another source

Write from the perspective of the person in the primary source

Translate documents into current day language

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Other Activities

Group Discussions

Oral Presentations

Web Quests 

Research Investigations - treat the primary source as a mystery and have students perform a research investigation