Primary Source Analysis: 4 Simple Steps to Teach Students

I was born in the 1900s.

That’s a heck of a way to open a blog post, isn’t it? But seriously…

The thing about learning in the 1900s is that most of my schooling involved memorization.

Reading? We read the story every single day. Then the teachers took it away from us, and we had to regurgitate the story elements through an assessment with no fewer than 15 questions.

Social Studies? We listened to the teacher talk, filled in some blanks on our guided notes that matched the underlined words on the overhead projector (ask your grandma what an overhead projector was), and took a test at the end of the week on the facts we had memorized.

Rinse and repeat. Every week–a new story, new facts, and new tests. I could easily ace any of those assessments because I had phenomenal short term memory. The issue was that, a week later, there was no way I could retrieve the information I learned the prior week.

Most schools have 180 days with students. 180. Social studies accounts for, on average, 50 minutes a day. In any given grade level, those 50 minutes a day over 180 days (even if we aren’t accounting for time for assessments, projects, and holidays) are expected to cover an average of 100 years of history. I don’t know about you, but I could fill up 180 days covering the last 10 years of America’s history alone.

The bottom line is this: learning that much content in that amount of time makes only memorization alone insufficient for our students.

We have to go beyond memorizing information.

This brings up the next dilemma: how do we get students moving past memorization and to a point where they internalize the content so deeply that they can retrieve it, ask questions about it, and make reasoned judgements about it?

We have to make it sticky. One way to do this is through the use of various types of sources in social studies classrooms. Sources give students new perspectives on history and provide an anchor to tether their knowledge to.

Many curriculum developers have recognized how big of a role sources can play in students landing their learning. Because of this, source analysis can be seen in various curricula across the country. But it’s one thing to include a variety of sources in your high quality instructional materials. It’s another thing to know how to teach students to properly analyze those sources without freezing up.

In order to get them defrosted when it comes to source analysis, we first need to determine why so many students freeze up when a source lands in front of them.

This usually stems from two different pain points.

First, there’s a consistency gap often found in curricula. Students may be introduced to a graphic organizer or mental model in the early grades, only to be handed an overly complicated version in the years that follow, so they never get the chance to build one reliable habit that grows with them.

The second pain point is that students come across these sources (especially primary ones) and are overwhelmed due to their complexity. Antiquated vocabulary, complex structure, and a missing purpose often get in the way of students understanding what relevance the primary source has to their learning. If we’re going to use sources to make history sticky, we need to help students access those sources.

Graphic organizers are often used to guide students through the steps of the thought process, but they often become compliance tools rather than comprehension tools.

In one instance, we’ve even seen students draw the word “conclusion” in bubble letters because the graphic organizer told them to “draw a conclusion.” 🫣

So how do we ensure students are understanding how to access the information they need from a primary source?

They need a mental model, and we need to explicitly model the questions we must ask ourselves when we encounter a complex source. Check out these four steps and their accompanying self questions below:

• Give a Purpose: Why am I analyzing this source?
• Observe: What do we see?
• Activate: What do we already know about what we see?
• Infer and Apply: How do our observations and knowledge connect to the purpose of the complex information?

Whether your students have never touched a primary source or analyze them every week, this model gives them one dependable routine to fall back on, no matter how the curricula or the sources change around them. It doesn’t replace the more advanced organizers students may need as they progress. However, it does give them a consistent starting point they can always return to, even when the source in front of them gets harder.

We actually created a strategy for this process, and our new Source Analysis Essentials Guide walks you through the step-by-step moves needed to model this for students in your classroom. Check it out here!