Teaching with Primary Sources

Scott M. Waring, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Social Science Education

University of Central Florida

Where is the University of Central Florida?

Teaching with Primary Sources?

The state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards was launched in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia, through their membership in the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). State school chiefs and governors recognized the value of consistent, real-world learning goals and launched this effort to ensure all students, regardless of where they live, are graduating high school prepared for college, career, and life.

© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

Forty-two states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

CCSS Key Ideas and Details

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.3Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.

CCSS Craft and Structure

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.4Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.5Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6Evaluate authors' differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors' claims, reasoning, and evidence.

CCSS Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

CCSS Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.10By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.

The result of a three year state-led collaborative effort, the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (2013) was developed to serve two audiences: for states to upgrade their state social studies standards and for practitioners — local school districts, schools, teachers and curriculum writers — to strengthen their social studies programs. Its objectives are to: a) enhance the rigor of the social studies disciplines; b) build critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills to become engaged citizens; and c) align academic programs to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies.

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History is the product of a collaboration among the following fifteen professional organizations committed to the advancement of social studies education:

• American Bar Association• American Historical Association • Association of American Geographers• Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools • Center for Civic Education• Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago• Constitutional Rights Foundation USA • Council for Economic Education• National Council for Geographic Education • National Council for History Education • National Council for the Social Studies • National Geographic Society• National History Day • Street Law, Inc.• World History Association

C3 Framework Organization

Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence

DIMENSION 3 includes the skills students need to analyze information and come to conclusions in an inquiry. These skills focus on gathering and evaluating sources, and then developing claims and using evidence to support those claims.

Students should use various technologies and skills to find information and to express their responses to compelling and supporting questions through well-reasoned explanations and evidence-based arguments. Through the rigorous analysis of sources and application of information from those sources, students should make the evidence-based claims that will form the basis for their conclusions.

Indicators of Dimension 3

• Gathering and Evaluating Sources

• Developing Claims and Using Evidence

Gathering and Evaluating Sources

Whether students are constructing opinions, explanation, or arguments, they will gather information from a variety of sources and evaluate the relevance of that information. In this section, students are asked to work with the sources that they gather and/or are provided for them. It is important for students to use online and print sources, and they need to be mindful that not all sources are relevant to their task.

Suggested K-12 PathwayGathering and Evaluating Sources

Developing Claims and Using Evidence

This subsection focuses on argumentation. In contrast to opinions and explanations, argumentation involves the ability to understand the source-to-evidence relationship. That relationship emphasizes the development of claims and counterclaims and the purposeful selection of evidence in support of those claims and counterclaims. Students will learn to develop claims using evidence, but their initial claims will often be tentative and probing. As students delve deeper into the available sources, they construct more sophisticated claims and counterclaims that draw on evidence from multiple sources. Whether those claims are implicitly or explicitly stated in student products, they will reflect the evidence students have selected from the sources they have consulted.

Suggested K-12 PathwayDeveloping Claims and Using Evidence

The Historic Sense (1917)

In 1917, J. Carleton Bell noted that when speaking with history teachers that one thought persists “I do not care to have my pupils learn dates and events, but I am particularly anxious to have them develop the historic sense.” As he questioned what this meant, especially for the learner in a history classroom, he found an eminent university professor of history who eloquently summed up this thought:

• If two students are given a number of newspaper files and are asked to write the history of a town for a five-year period, one will give a clear, intelligible, well articulated account, with the various events and movements in due perspective, with adequate emphasis on a few leading features and proper subordination of details, while the other will have merely a hodge-podge of miscellaneous facts. The one shows the historic sense, the other does not. (p. 317-318)

Bell, J. C. (1917). The historic sense. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 8(5), 317-318.

Five Aspects of the Historic Sense (1917)

1. The ability to understand present events in light of the past.2. The ability to sift through the documentary record--newspaper

articles, hearsay, partisan attacks, contemporary accounts--and construct "from this confused tangle a straightforward and probable account" of what happened.

3. The ability to appreciate a historical narrative. 4. Reflective and discriminating replies to ‘thought questions' on

a given historical situation.”5. The ability to answer factual questions about historical

personalities and events.

Bell, J. C., & McCollum, D.F. (1917). A study of the attainments of pupils in United States history. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 8(5), 257-274.

Historical Habits of Mind

• Understand the significance of the past to their own lives, both private and public, and to their society. • Distinguish between the important and the inconsequential, to develop the "discriminating memory" needed for a

discerning judgment in public and personal life. • Perceive past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as

opposed to present-mindedness. • Acquire at one and the same time a comprehension of diverse cultures and of shared humanity. • Understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter, but also how their

consequences are shaped by the means of carrying them out, in a tangle of purpose and process. • Comprehend the interplay of change and continuity, and avoid assuming that either is somehow more natural, or

more to be expected than the other. • Prepare to live with uncertainties and exasperating, even perilous, unfinished business, realizing that not all

problems have solutions. • Grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalization. • Appreciate the often tentative nature of judgments about the past and thereby avoid the temptation to seize

upon particular "lessons" of history as cures for present ills. • Recognize the importance of individuals who have made a difference in history, and the significance of personal

character for both good and ill. • Appreciate the force of the nonrational, the irrational, the accidental, in history and human affairs. • Understand the relationship between geography and history as a matrix of time and place, and as context for

events. • Read widely and critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and

assertion, and thereby to frame useful questions.

The Bradley Commission on History in Schools. (1988). Building a history curriculum: guidelines for teaching history in schools. Washington D.C.: Educational Excellence Network.

Creating Historical ThinkersHistorical “Habits of Mind”

• Novice vs. Expert Level Continuum

• Historical presentism• Progression of time is preordained – clear start and finish to

history • Progression of intelligence• One cause for historical events – presented by the textbook• Learn from the past to avoid mistakes in the future• One source and perspective is sufficient

Bradley Commission on History in Schools. (1995). Building a history curriculum: Guidelines for teaching history in schools. Westlake, OH: National Council for History Education. p. 9.

Best Practices in History Instruction

• Create authentic questions • Students must have opportunities to ask questions of

personal interest.

• Utilize a variety of sources• A variety of sources (i.e. published documents, unpublished

documents, oral histories, visual documents, artifacts, etc.) should be sought to answer the question posed.

• Examine the sources• Each source must be examined to determine who constructed

it and why.

Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Best Practices in History Instruction

• Determine the context• Context for the document is vital. A document taken out of context

can lead to invalid conclusions.

• Read the sources• Sources should be read closely and efforts should be made to

“read between the lines.”

• Consider alternative perspectives• Multiple alternative perspectives must be considered. Finding just

the polar extremes is not sufficient.

Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Best Practices in History Instruction

• Corroborate the sources• Corroborating sources need to be found.

• Construct narratives• Opportunities should be presented where students have a chance to

construct historical narratives utilizing the spectrum of sources, while noting where gaps in the sources or the author’s knowledge exist.

Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

What are Primary Sources?

1. What are Primary and Secondary Sources (make a list)

2. Leaving Evidence of our Lives (Mind Walk)

3. What is it? (Name and purpose) • Introducing Artifacts to Students (and Teachers)• Library of Congress• eBay

4. How to Use Primary Sources (LOC - Green Handout)• Primary Sources Analysis Tool• Teacher's Guide to Analysis

Analyzing PhotographsNovice-Level Analysis

•

Bibliographic Information

• Title: Daily inspection of teeth and finger nails. Older pupils make the inspection under the direction of teacher who records results. This has been done every day this year. School #49, Comanche County.

• Location: Lawton [vicinity], Oklahoma • Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer • Date Created/Published: 1917 April. • Medium: 1 photographic print. • Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-00667 (color digital file from

b&w original print) LC-USZ62-17510 (b&w film copy negative) • Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Call Number: LOT 7475, v. 3, no. 4780 [P&P] • Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Analyzing DocumentsLeading Towards Expert-Level Analysis

The SOURCES Framework

• Scrutinize the Fundamental Source• Organize Thoughts• Understand the Context• Read Between the Lines• Corroborate and Refute• Establish a Plausible Narrative• Summarize Final Thoughts

Waring, S. M., & Scheiner-Fisher, C. (2014). Using SOURCES to allow digital natives to explore the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Middle School Journal, 45(4), 3-12.

Scrutinize Fundamental Source

First, allow the students to examine a primary source selected by the teacher as the one source that is fundamental to learning about the content or subject to be learned.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis on June 20, 1803

Organize Thoughts

Second, have the students organize their thoughts. Students should think about what knowledge they have about the content being presented in the fundamental source and the individual(s) who constructed it. If a student needs additional background information, the teacher may provide narrative(s) that better explains the underlying historical content being covered. This is a great time to incorporate children’s and young adult literature.

Webcast video of Gerard Gawalt, American History specialist, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/ journey/video/jefferson.ram)

Understand the Context

Third, check for comprehension of the context and the source that is being examined. Students should monitor their thinking and be sure the source is not taken out of context or viewed through lenses, morals, and principles of today.

Read Between the Lines

Fourth, model and scaffold the act of “reading between the lines,” which means that the students should not necessarily take whatever is viewed at face value; rather, students should consider multiple perspectives. And, students should think about motivations for the construction and the intended audience of the source being examined.

Excerpt from the Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis on June 20, 1803

Corroborate and Refute

Fifth, use and/or find additional sources that will corroborate or refute what is being presented in the fundamental source.

A map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior parts of North America (1802)

Cipher from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, April 20, 1803

Establish a Plausible Narrative

Sixth, construct a plausible narrative from the data collected and analyzed. The investigation and learning should continue during this phase to locate additional sources and to append and modify narratives as new information is discovered.

Excerpt from Meriwether Lewis’ Journal

Summarize Final Thoughts

To conclude, students should summarize any additional thoughts and formulate questions for future investigation.

Web Resources

• Annenberg Learner - Teacher Professional Development• Center for History and New Media• DBQ Project• Digital History• eBay• Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History• Library of Congress• National Archives and Records Administration• National Gallery of Art• National History Education Clearinghouse• National Portrait Gallery• National Women's History Museum• Our Documents - National Archives and Records Administration• Smithsonian Source• Teach US History• The Constitutional Convention• Why Historical Thinking Matters

http://www.sourcesconference.com

Thank you for your time!

Scott M. Waring, Ph.D.University of Central Florida

Associate Professor of Social Science EducationDirector of the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at UCF

swaring@ucf.edu