Goals:

1.  The students will develop an understanding of primary sources and their importance.

2.  The students will infer information from primary source documents.

Resources/Materials:

1.  Internet Access: http://grid.let.rug.nl/%7Ewelling/usa/

2.  Historic Documents - actual artifacts if possible (i.e. documents of the establishment of the city, records from the school, etc.)

Time:

The whole lesson should take about 2 1/2 hours to 4 1/2 hours. Parts 1-6 should take about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours. Part 7 should take 15 minutes. Part 8 should take 10 minutes. Parts 9-11 should take about 1 hour to 2 hours. Part 12 should take about 30 minutes.

Procedure:

1. The students will write a summary of what they did that previous weekend and hand them in to the teacher.

2. Divide the students into groups of two.

3. The students will discuss what they did that weekend.

4. After a few minutes of discussion, ask each student to get up and share what the other student did to the class.

5. Compare this student's report (secondary source) with the written document that the student wrote (primary source).

6. Discuss any differences that arise.

7. Explain the differences between primary sources and secondary sources.

8. The students will then list reasons why primary sources are better to use in history than secondary sources.

9. Have the students get into groups of four to five.

10.  Hand out examples of primary sources involving the American Revolution Era (e.g.. The Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, The Proclamation of Neutrality (1783)) to each group. Sections of these documents may be used to cut back on class time. (http://grid.let.rug.nl/%7Ewelling/usa/ is a good site for these documents.)

11. Because of the challenging nature of the primary sources the students will read the document as a group and then discuss what they have learned from the document.

12. Conclude with student reports about what the document was about and what they learned about American History from reading the document to the class.

Assessment:

1. Each student will be responsible for his or her group presentation. Criteria for Success: Each student will be responsible to share five facts about American History that they learned from their source, and each student will share two facts that they inferred from the primary documents that might have been lost in a secondary source.

Curricular Strands & Major Concepts:

1. Language Arts - reading, critically analyzing, & writing

2. Social Studies - history, primary sources.

Possible Extensions:

1. Biographies on the people responsible for the documents.

2. Trip to a museum to see actual historic artifacts.

Sailing into the 21st Century - developed by Angela Hammerlind, Renee Kust, & Kevin Feyen

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This page submitted by St. Norbert Ocean Voyagers Program