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. 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. Successful student interactions with primary sources require careful primary source selections and lesson planning. Primary 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. Inquiry 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. What are primary sources?
Why teach with primary sources?
Before you begin
Engage students with primary
sources
Promote student inquiry
- 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.
Assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources
Primary 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.
- Ask students to test their assumptions about the past.
- Ask students to find other primary or secondary sources that offer support or contradiction.
- 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.
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.
When analysing a source, it is important to realise that every source was made for a particular reason. Usually, knowing the purpose for its creation will help you evaluate its relevance and reliability to your argument.
The purpose of a source is the reason it was originally made. The creator of the source put in the time and effort to create it, and it was usually so that it could be used for something.
This can be a simple as creating an ancient ceramic pot to store grain. Or it could be as complex as writing a 1960s pop song in order to criticise the government's role in the Vietnam War.
Based upon what you know about the creator and the intended audience, you can usually identify why the source was originally made. It can also be helpful to know what motivated the creator at a particular point in time.
Watch a video explanation on the History Skills YouTube channel:
Depending upon the type of source, there are some common purposes for their creation.
For example:
Type of Source | Common Purposes |
Academic Journal | To provide academic insight regarding a particular topic |
Book | To inform or persuade the audience about the topic |
Magazine | To inform or entertain its audience |
Newspaper | To inform or persuade the audience about an event |
Photograph | To record the details of an event, person or location |
Speech | To persuade the audience to agree with the speaker |
Textbook | To inform and educate its audience regarding a topic |
Discussing a source's purpose in your writing:
The Gallic Wars, created by Julius Caesar himself during his campaigns in Gaul in the 50s BC, was written to convince the residents of Rome of the supremacy of his military and political prowess.
The building was constructed as a way of showing off Charles' wealth to other European monarchs.
This academic journal was created by a university professor to show the results of their research about the impact of American media on Australian popular culture.
No personal information is collected as part of this quiz. Only the selected responses to the questions are recorded.