Primary Sources and Everyday Life

Adapted from The Library of Congress Historian's Sources Lesson Overview

  • Purpose: This lesson introduces students to the idea that people leave behind traces of their lives. These traces can be found later by historians and used to reconstruct events that occur and how people feel about and respond to those events.
  • Standards:
    • New York State Social Studies Standard 1: The skills of historical analysis include the ability to: explain the significance of historical evidence; weigh the importance, reliability, and validity of evidence; understand the concept of multiple causation; understand the importance of changing and competing interpretations of different historical developments.
    • H10: consider different interpretations of key events and/or issues in history and understand the differences in these accounts
  • Materials: Paper and pencil or student notebooks
  • Number of class periods needed: 1

Connection

You should explain to the students to the purpose of the day's lesson and how it fits into the larger context of the work in which they are engaged. You might say something like:

"This year in social studies, we are going to learn to study the past like historians do. Historians look at something called the historical record to figure out what might have happened in the past. Since we don't always have people who we can ask (and lots of times people disagree!), historians look for evidence and then piece together what might have happened, kind of like on CSI type TV shows. Today, we are going to begin to think about what kinds of evidence historians might use as they try to understand what happened in the past.

 

Procedure

  • Tell students: Create two columns on your paper. Title the first column "My Day." Title the second column "Historical Evidence."
  • Think about (do a "mind walk" through) all the activities you were involved in during the past 24 hours. In one column on a piece of paper (or in your notebook) list as many of these activities as you can remember.
  • For each activity on your list, write down next to that activity in the second column what evidence, if any, your activities might have left behind. To help you think of traces that might be left behind, review Historical Evidence in Daily Life:
    • Did you create any records of your activities (a diary, notes to yourself, a letter to a friend or relative, an e-mail message, a telephone message)?
    • Would traces of your activities appear in records someone else created (a friend's diary, notes, or calendar entry; a letter or e-mail from a friend or relative)?
    • Would traces of your activities appear in school records? in business records (did you or a grown up write a check or use a charge card for the activity)? in the school or local newspaper? in government records (did you get your driver's license or go to traffic court)?
    • Would anyone be able to offer testimony (or oral history) about your activities (who and why)?
  • Other Types of Historical Evidence: Other aspects of the historical record are not records at all, but may still offer evidence about our lives. Traces you left behind in your daily activities might include:
    • The trash you have thrown away
    • Material objects you use every day (coins, paper money, stamps, computers)
    • Objects in the place you live (especially in your own bedroom)
    • Things that you made
  • Review your entire list, and what you wrote about evidence your activities left behind. Then answer these questions:
    • Which of your daily activities were most likely to leave trace evidence behind?
    • What, if any, of that evidence might be preserved for the future? Why?
    • What might be left out of an historical record of your activities? Why?
    • What would a future historian be able to tell about your life and your society based on evidence of your daily activities that might be preserved for the future?

    • Extension

    Now think about a more public event currently happening (a court case, election, public controversy, law being debated), and answer these questions:

    • What kinds of evidence might this event leave behind?
    • Who records information about this event?
    • For what purpose are different records of this event made?

    Assessment

    Since this is an introductory lesson to primary sources of information, you will be assessing student responses to the above work and the written reflection in their notebooks. Look for evidence of student ability to:

    • identify a range of primary sources
    • infer information based on these sources
    • use multiple pieces of evidence to corroborate an interpretation.

    Written Reflection

    Pretend you are a future historian and you found materials described in this Mind Walk. What could you infer or conclude about this person's life? What might the materials tell historian about the family, community, region, and/or nation of this person? What would they be unable to learn about both the person's life and life in the U.S. from these documents?

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