Using Primary Sources in the Social Studies Classroom

Description

The use of primary sources as an instructional tool in the social studies classroom engages students, encourages high levels of learning, and raises test scores. But with so much to do and so little time, how can teachers know what strategies and resources work best? In this workshop, teachers will join other social studies teachers to find the answer to that question. Participants will be introduced to both online and print materials and provided specific examples of how to use those resources with their students.

Sponsoring Organization
ESSDACK
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Cost
$60 nonmembers; $30.00 members; $45.00 associate members
Duration
Seven hours
Website
http://sophos.essdack.org/dev_students.asp?action=coursedetail&id=2874&main=Soc…

Beyond Words

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The Library of Congress's LC Labs has created the crowdsourcing pilot project Beyond Words that lets users identify and transcribe World War I era images in Chronicling America's historical newspaper collection.

This community engagement project is built using the Scribe codebase and allows for the exploration of historical illustrations, political cartoons, and photographs in newspapers published between 1914-1918. Users can choose among three main actions in Beyond Words. In the "Mark" section, users identify historical images by state newspapers and draw boxes around them. "Transcribe" allows users to record captions, creators, and category of image. "Verify" gives users the ability to edit transcriptions and choose the best one before the catalogued image is added to the Beyond Words public dataset and Image Gallery. 

Beyond Words has many useful applications for the classroom. The "Mark" section enables users to choose and box the newspaper images such as illustrations, photographs, and cartoons, but not images used in newspaper advertisements. This means that teachers can use this section to improve students' primary source analysis skills as students would have to think carefully about what type of image they are marking. The "Transcribe" section would further enhance students' critical thinking skills because they must examine each part of the primary source to document the image's creator, the captions, as well as the type of image. Students could then use the "Verify" section to assess other's transcriptions.

Beyond Words is also a great project to introduce to students studying World War I. The images and newspaper pages contained in the codebase are all linked to the original digitized newspaper in Chronicling America. Students could use Beyond Words to jump start a research project on political cartoons during World War I, or how news coverage of the war changed over time. Since this project is crowdsourced, students would enrich their primary source analysis skills and knowledge of World War I at the same time that they are contributing to this public history project and increasing others' access to new knowledge. 

primary sources
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Crop It

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What is it?

Crop It is a four-step hands-on learning routine where teachers pose questions and students use paper cropping tools to deeply explore a visual primary source.

Rationale

In our fast-paced daily activities we make sense of thousands of images in just a short glance. Crop It slows the sense-making process down to provide time for students to think. It gives them a way to seek evidence, multiple viewpoints, and a deeper, more detailed, understanding before determining the meaning of a primary source.

Description

This routine helps young students look carefully at a primary source to focus on details and visual information and use these to generate and support ideas. Students use evidence from their “crops” to build an interpretation or make a claim. Crop It can be completed as part of a lesson, and can be used with different kinds of visual sources (for example cropping a work of art, a poem, or a page from a textbook).

Teacher Preparation
  1. Print a collection of primary sources related to the unit or topic under study. The collection may include:
      • various types of sources that include images, such as photographs, cartoons, advertisements, and newspaper articles. Consider images that challenge students to use varying amounts of background knowledge and vocabulary, or that can be read by students working on different reading levels;
      • sources representing different perspectives on the topic;
      • sources depicting the people, places, and events that will be tested in a unit;
      • sources representing perspectives that are missing from the textbook’s account.
  2. Print enough copies so each student can have one source: it’s fine if some students have the same image.
  3. Print and cut out enough Crop It tools so that each student has a set of two tools.
  4. Prepare to display a series of questions either through a PowerPoint presentation or on chart paper.
In the Classroom

Step One: Choose an Image

Ask students to choose a source from the collection that either:

    • connects to an experience that you have had;
    • relates to something that you know a lot about, and/or
    • leaves you with questions.

*Note: other criteria may be substituted such as choose an image that relates to a question you have about the unit, relates to your favorite part of this unit, or that represents the most important topic or idea of this unit.

Step Two: Explore the Image

Crop the image to the part that first caught your eye. Think: Why did you notice this part? Crop to show who or what this image is about. Think: Why is this person or thing important? Crop to a clue that shows where this takes place. Think: What has happened at this place?

  1. Pass out a set of two Crop It tools to each student. Demonstrate how to use the Crop It tools to focus on a particular piece of a source. Students can make various sizes of triangles, rectangles, and lines to “crop” or focus attention on an important part of the source.
  2. Invite students to carefully explore their image by using the tools. Pose a question and ask students to look carefully and “crop” to an answer. For example, ask students to:
  3. (See Question Sets Handout for additional sample questions.) Invite students to revise their answer by choosing another crop that could answer the same question. Encourage students to consider: if they could only have one answer, then which crop would be best? Why? Allow students to look at the crops of other students. Students can explain their crop to a partner. Or ask students to place their source and crop on their desk, and invite students to silently walk around and notice the different types of evidence that students used to answer the same question.

Step Three: Identify the Evidence

Collect the types of evidence students cropped on large chart paper by asking them to recall the different types of details that they cropped. These charts encourage students to notice details and can be used later, when adding descriptions to writing or as supports for answers during class discussions. The charts might look like the example below and will constantly grow as students discover how details help them build meaning. Chart

Step Four: Close the Lesson

Conclude the lesson by asking students what they learned about the topic related to the collection. Ask them to reflect on what they learned about looking at sources, and when in their life they might use the Crop It routine to understand something.

Common Pitfalls

Avoid asking too many questions during Step Two: Explore. Keep the questions and the cropping moving fairly quickly so students stay engaged and focused on their primary source. To increase the amount of thinking for everyone, don’t allow students to share their own crops with a partner or the class right away. Ask students to revise their own crop by trying different ideas before sharing.

Example

See Image Set Handout for samples that you might use with this strategy. These images represent some events key to understanding the Great Depression of the 1930s (e.g., FDR’s inauguration and the Bonus Army’s march on Washington) and could be used to review or preview a unit of study.

For more information

Finding Collections of Primary Sources to Crop

Find Primary Source Sets at the Library of Congress.

See this entry on finding primary sources or search Website Reviews to find useful sources.

Other Resources

Visible Thinking, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Artful Thinking, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Richhart, R., Palmer, P., Church, M., & S. Tishman. (April 2006). Thinking Routines: Establishing Patterns in the Thinking Classroom. Paper prepared for the American Educational Research Association.

Bibliography

Crop It was developed by Rhonda Bondie through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Northern Virginia.

Online Primary Source Collections

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It can be time-consuming to find and prepare primary sources for your lessons. On each of the below sites, you will find primary sources that address multiple topics in U.S. History. Many of the sites provide excerpts of lengthy sources and helpful annotations. Start at one of these sites to find primary sources to use in your next lesson!

Websites with Collections of Primary Sources

100 Milestone Documents, from Our Documents at the National Archives: This collection of 100 milestone documents has been compiled by the National Archives and chronicles the history of the U.S. from 1776 to 1965. Sources include public laws, Supreme Court decisions, inaugural speeches, treaties, constitutional amendments, and other documents that have influenced the course of U.S. history. Both original and transcribed copies are available.

The Avalon Project, from the Yale Law School: This collection, which can be viewed chronologically from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, includes documents selected for their importance in American legal history. Sources can also be searched by themed “Document Collections”.

Docs Teach, from the National Archives: This collection of over 3,000 primary documents is organized by historical era, from the nation’s founding to the present. Documents, including maps, charts, graphs, audio, and video, have been selected by National Archives Staff, and are photographic reproductions of historical sources.

Many Pasts, from the History Matters project of CUNY Graduate Center and George Mason University: This feature of George Mason University’s History Matters project features prepared and selected primary documents in text, image, and audio about the experiences of ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. The “full search” feature on the site allows users to choose resources by historical period, topic, type of resource, etc.

Smithsonian Source, from the Smithsonian Institute: This collection of primary sources can be searched by keyword, type, or topic, and includes documents on Westward Expansion, Transportation, Civil Rights, Invention, Colonial America, and Native American history. Each set includes selected and excerpted documents.

You can also visit this entry for places to find online sets of primary sources.

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