Primary Source Archives
- National Archives: The United States National Archives holds a collection of primary sources about the history of the United States, from the development of the United States as a national to the various roles the United States played in the World Wars. The archive also hold a special section for teachers, with many resources that teachers can use such as: DocsTeach, eBooks, course (via iTunes) as well as Historypin (in which images, videos and audio are pinned to Google maps and layered onto Street View to witness the past in the present)
- British National Archives: The British National Archives offers a wonderful collection of World War II sources. In additional to holding a wonderful collection of primary sources it also includes an education sections which includes lesson plans, workshops, virtual classrooms as well as many resources for both teachers and students.
- Japanese Interment: This is a great archive dedicated to the preservation of primary sources about Japanese internment in the United States. The website is filled with many primary sources from men and women who lived in these internment camps during World War II. Once great thing about this website, is that it hold primary source images and journals about the every day lives of the people living in the camps.
- Alpha History: This is a wonderful website filled with a plethora of primary sources from World War II. The archive has an incredibly large section on primary sources from Nazi Germany, including journal entries, speeches that Hitler made as well as official government documents.
- German Propaganda Archive: Calvin College has a massive collection of primary source World War II documents, the majority of which relate to German propaganda before, during and after the war. the website includes lots of visual materials such as posters, caricatures and photographs. It also holds a great collection of Anti-Semitic documents such as newspaper articles, pamphlets and books that the Nazis used.
Primary Source Lesson Plans
Battle of Lexington: This lesson helps students understand what exactly occurred at the Battle of Lexington. This is an incredibly useful lesson when studying the reason why the colonies sought independence from England. In this lesson students read two different accounts (one told from the colonial perspective and the other from the British perspective) by analyzing these primary sources (pictures and written statements) students will be able to form their own conclusion about what exactly happened at the Battle of Lexington.
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Homestead Strike: This lesson helps students understand what exactly occurred during the Homestead Strike. This is an incredibly useful lesson when studying the effect of Industrialization. It is because of industrialization that many works began to join unions and in many cases unions became violent such as in the case of the Homestead Strike. In this lesson students read two different accounts (one told from the perspective of a union supporter and the other from the perspective of a factory manager) by analyzing these primary sources students will be able to form their own conclusion about what they thing occurred during the Homestead Strike.
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Analysis Tools
Photo Analysis Worksheet: The photo analysis worksheet will be very useful to student when analyzing photographs. Often times, students simply look at the photographs and don’t look for the details within the photograph. The photo analysis worksheet is divided into various sections such as a section to study the photograph, a chart for students to list what they see in the photograph as well as an inference and question section for students to answer. By having to complete this worksheet, students will be able to properly analyze a photograph and be able to identify why the photograph is historically significant. |
Written Document Analysis Worksheet: This written document analysis worksheet will be very useful to students when reading primary source documents. Often times when presented with a primary source written documents students just begin reading it without understanding anything about the history of the document. The written document analysis worksheet will be very useful to students because it is divided in various sections which asks students to identify the type of document that they are reading, identify any unique physical characteristics about the document, identify the date, author, position, audience as well as answer question about the document itself. By having to complete this worksheet not only will students identify the useful information that exists in the document but they will also be able to source and contextualize the document, thus obtaining a deeper understanding of what they are reading |