LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TEACHER’S GUIDES AND PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS TOOL

The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library’s vast digital collections in their teaching. Helping students analyze primary sources can guide them toward higherorder thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills. The Library provides a variety of these guides based on primary source material. Teachers can select prompting questions from a Teacher’s Guide as needed to guide students through the analysis process. On the Library of Congress website, one can find a variety of these tools: analyzing photographs and prints, books and other printed text, manuscripts, maps, political cartoons, motion pictures, sheet

TEACHER'S GUIDE ANALYZING PRIMARY SOURCES

OBSERV E

Have students identify and note details e Questions :

Sampl music and song sheets, oral histories, and sound recordings. Each analysis tool asks questions to help students construct knowledge as they form reasonable conclusions based on evidence they see, hear, or read. Then students connect primary sources to the context in which they were created. Plan instruction, including activity types, time required, and whether students will work individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. Use the Primary Source Analysis Tool from the Library of Congress and select guiding questions from the teacher’s guides to support students in analyzing the primary sources.

Guide students with the sample questions as they respond to the primary source Encourage the m to go back and forth betwee n the columns; there is no correct order

REFLEC T

Encourage students to generate and test hypotheses about the source

Questio N

Have students ask questions to lead to mor e observations and reflections

• Find something small but interesting

What do you notice first?

• What do you notice that you didn't expect?

• What do you notice that you can't explain?

• What do you notice now that you didn't earlier?

FURTHE R INVESTIGATIO N

• Why do you think somebody made this?

Where do you think this came from?

- What do you think was happening when this was made?

• Who do you think was the audience for this item?

• What tool was used to create this?

• Why do you think this item is important?

• If someone made this today what would be different?

• What can you learn from examining this?

What do you wonder about.. who? • what? • when? • where? • why? • how?

Help students to identify questions appropriate for further investigation, and to develop a research strategy for finding answers Sampl e Question : What more do you want to know, and how can you find out?

A few follow-up activity ideas: Beginning

Have students compare two relatedprimarysource items.

Intermediate

Have students expand or alter textbook explanations ofhistory based on primarysources theystudy.

Advanced Askstudents to considerhow a series ofprimarysources support or challenge information and understanding on a particular topic Have students refine or revise conclusions based on their study of each subsequent primary source.

Extension ideas are available for each analysis guide @ https://www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/classroom-materials/

For more tips on using primary sources, go to http://www.loc.gov/teachers