Setting It Straight: Primary vs. Secondary Sources

A common mix up that teachers will see occur with students is the confusion between primary and secondary sources.

Primary Sources are defined as documents (dairies, letters, drawings, memoirs) from the past that gives us witnesses of what occurred. Important historical concepts are exposed to students when they use and analyze primary sources. The students get into the mindset and viewpoint of the author and get exposed to a more personal side of history where students feel the emotions and experience the attitudes of those living during a certain time in the past. When students are using primary sources, they are developing important analytical skills. The students will learn how a point of view affects evidence and can debate about the interpretation of the sources. To give the students examples of primary sources, the teacher can point out that they have their own primary sources such as their birth certificates and social security numbers. To study primary sources for history, students can visit museums and historical societies. More tips about finding primary sources can be found on the Getting Started with Primary Sources website.

There are many ways that you can use primary sources in the classroom, especially for teaching history. Some ideas are to compare a primary source with a source from today, re-create something parallel to the source, apply the source to their own lives, and recognizing point of view and bias attitudes. More ideas like these can be found on the Primary Sources document. Teachers can refer to the Library of Congress website as a resource to find ways to analyze primary sources. They list many reflective questions to help engage the students in their analytical skills.

Secondary Sources are written after an event has occurred. They provide second-hand accounts of a person, topic, or event. Secondary sources interprets and analyzes the primary sources. They can include textbooks, magazine articles, commentaries, journal articles, reference books, etc. Teachers can use secondary sources to compare to primary sources so that students can gain a better understanding of the difference between the two types of sources. This Teaching Primary and Secondary Sources activity is a great activity to use in the classroom to help compare the sources. It is important that students understand the differences between the two sources for their knowledge and to build on their analytical skills.