What Is a Primary-Source Document?

Engage your middle schoolers with Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous poem that begins, "First they came for the communists." Now that you have their attention, send learners to the various work stations you created to have them explore...

Young historians learn how to analyze various forms of primary source documents. The colorful packet is packed with all you need to engage kids in this essential skill.

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...

Was Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite? Tackle this question with primary source analysis and an essay. The packet includes historical background, a writing prompt, a combined outline and checklist, and ten primary documents paired with...

Young historians can use this simple graphic organizer to define primary source and list both examples and non-examples of the term. A similar resource can also be constructed for secondary sources!

Connect historical text to primary sources. Researchers observe and discuss primary sources. Then, historians bring in their own personal artifacts and connect them back to their history.

Students explore the usage of primary sources, what they are and how they originate. Artifacts are compared and contrasted as part of this historical inquiry as questions are formulated and conclusions drawn.

Why do we read primary source documents? What can they give us that other writings cannot? Provide your learners with any of the primary sources attached here (there are seven), and have them complete the graphic organizer (which opens...