Using Primary Sources in your Social Studies Classroom
Teaching with primary sources is one of those tricky things. I feel like we’re always told to include them, and it seems like a simple request. But are we making the best of them? Can we push past observation and push towards historical thinking and analysis? That’s where the tricky part comes in: getting past simply displaying these sources for students to “look at”.
I’m excited to share some primary resource strategies that I think work really well with your middle school students. I’ll walk you through them and give you links to other resources that you can use in your social studies classroom!
Why Primary Sources?
First, primary sources are first-hand accounts or evidence of a particular person, place, event, or time in history. This includes photographs, documents, artifacts, etc. Most often, classrooms use photographs and documents as primary sources.
Using primary sources in the classroom allows students to use their reasoning skills and allows them to practice drawing conclusions from information. In certain situations, students are even able to draw conclusions from multiple sources of information. It also pushes students to answer non-Googleable questions. To me, the best part of using primary sources is its ability to allow students to build a connection to historical events. Building this connection helps to solidify the learning and to build engagement and interest.
Think like a detective by analyzing evidence.
Strategies for Using Primary Sources
Gallery Walk
Post a series of images and/or documents around your classroom or hallway, creating a “gallery”. Allow students to walk around the “gallery” to analyze the images. You can allow students to carry their guiding questions on a clipboard as they walk the “gallery”.
One option is to have the image printed on a page that’s folded in half. The image is displayed, but students can lift up to see information about the image. This allows students to analyze the image first, make predictions or draw conclusions, before learning the details. This option is my preference.
Another option is to simply have the images/documents posted with details displayed with it. While this does not allow for predictions about the source, it does provide immediate context, which might be necessary depending on the lesson.
Zoomed In
Choose an image, and zoom in on a portion of the image. Prompt students to make predictions and ask guiding questions. Then, reveal another portion of the image (or the whole image). Prompt students again to make predictions about what is happening. Once the whole image is revealed, students may complete a full analysis.
Black Out
Similar to the “zoomed in” strategy, the teacher would hide or cover certain parts of the document. Students use context clues or their own background knowledge to predict what’s happening. You could reveal the hidden text to further explain, or it could stay covered to act as a spotlight on the important information.
Timeline
Choose a series of primary or secondary sources and organize them in chronological order to create a timeline. Students can draw conclusions about how events in history relate to other events.
Another option is to give students the sources and allow them to organize them in chronological order.
Matching (image to description)
This activity is great to do in groups, but it can also be effective as an independent activity. In this source activity, give students images and/or documents. Then have them match those to a description or detailed information. You can make this activity feel more tactile by have the images/documents as laminated cards, plus the descriptions as laminated cards. Students can physically match the images to the descriptions. For a simpler approach, you can have the images and the descriptions on a worksheet for students to match - just like a matching activity for vocabulary that you’ve seen before.
Compare/Contrast
This is great for analyzing change over time. You can also use this type of activity for analyzing different perspectives or stances on issues.
For analyzing change over time, maps and images are great resources. For example, maps or images of forests in Brazil from different time periods is a great way to showcase deforestation.
For analyzing different stances on issues, speeches or propaganda are great resources. For instance, you could display images of the Vietnam-ear anti-war protest while also displaying (or listening to) a speech from President Kennedy regarding the need to send troops to Vietnam.
In both examples, students can draw conclusions in a compare/contrast format.
Sample Guiding Questions for Images
What do you notice first about the photograph?
Describe the time and place you predict the photo was taken.
Why did you predict this time and place?
List the people, objects, and events that are happening here.
Write one to two sentences as a caption for this photo.
Give this photo a title.