Loc: Creating a Primary Source Archive: All History Is Local

Primary sources—even those that seem mundane—offer a window into those who experienced history. Using a Red Cross map offered to soldiers stationed in Paris after World War II alongside worksheet questions, scholars consider what life...

These student worksheets and activities help students analyze many different types of primary source documents. Life histories, objects, and photographs are all used to engage students.

Scholars study a historical photograph to make predictions of what happened right after the picture was taken. They research a variety of different topics and use primary sources to answer questions about common food, fashion trends, and...

By reviewing and analyzing these nine selected points from Martin Luther's 95 Theses, your young historians will discern the major tenets of the revolutionary challenge made against the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. This is...

Students explore personal, local, state, and national history. In this historiography lesson, students search the Library of Congress digital collections for primary sources regarding their family histories framed in local, state, and...

Travel through Europe with ten-year-old Teddy Roosevelt in this writing activity, which uses the picture book My Tour of Europe: by Teddy Roosevelt, by Ellen Jackson. After reading the book, readers compare it to passages from The...

Engage your scholars by having them create "magic lantern shows" inspired by the film Dr. Toer's Amazing Magic Lantern Show: A Different View of Emancipation. As they study the South's Reconstruction through primary...

A picture speaks a thousand words, no matter how old! Scholars use political cartoons from the era of Prohibition and the Temperance Movement to analyze what, a primary document (in this case, a bootlegger's notebook) is telling them...

Distinguish between primary and secondary source documents using the theme of philanthropy. Middle schoolers discuss Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl as a way to study the past using a primary source. Then they investigate how to...

An extensive collection of primary source documents of early development of the new United States. Resources include a wide variety of details about the Northwest Ordinance.