Primary Source Analysis Tool

The Library of Congress provides teacher’s guides that help students analyze primary sources, guiding them toward higher-order thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills. The Library provides a variety of these guides based on primary source material. On the Library of Congress’s website one can find a variety of these tools, which help students analyze photographs and prints, books and other printed text, manuscripts, maps, political cartoons, motion pictures, sheet music and song sheets, oral histories, and sound recordings. Each analysis tool includes

questions to help students construct knowledge as they form reasonable conclusions based on the evidence they see, hear, or read. Then students can connect primary sources to the context in which they were created. When viewing illustrations, drawings, or photos, students should be able to answer these probing questions.

The analysis tools are not linear; teachers should encourage students to go back and forth between the columns to answer the questions.

Extension ideas are available for each analysis guide at https://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/guides.html