Webinar presentation TEACHING WITH PRIMARY SOURCES

Teaching with
Primary Sources
Scott M. Waring, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Social Science Education
University of Central Florida

Where is the
University of Central Florida?

Teaching with Primary Sources?

The state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards was
launched in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state
commissioners of education from 48 states, two territories and the
District of Columbia, through their membership in the National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). State school chiefs and
governors recognized the value of consistent, real-world learning goals
and launched this effort to ensure all students, regardless of where
they live, are graduating high school prepared for college, career, and
life.
© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

Forty-two states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the
Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted the
Common Core State Standards.

CCSS Key Ideas and Details
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and
secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details
to an understanding of the text as a whole.
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or
secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear
the relationships among the key details and ideas.
Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine
which explanation best accords with textual evidence,
acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.

CCSS Craft and Structure
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a
text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the
meaning of a key term over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison
defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured,
including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the
text contribute to the whole.
Evaluate authors' differing points of view on the same historical
event or issue by assessing the authors' claims, reasoning, and
evidence.

CCSS Integration of
Knowledge and Ideas
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in
diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in
words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by
corroborating or challenging them with other information.
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and
secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting
discrepancies among sources.

CCSS Range of Reading and
Level of Text Complexity
By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend history/social studies
texts in the grades 11-CCR text complexity band independently and
proficiently.

The result of a three year state-led
collaborative effort, the College, Career,
and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social
Studies State Standards (2013) was
developed to serve two audiences: for
states to upgrade their state social studies
standards and for practitioners — local
school districts, schools, teachers and
curriculum writers — to strengthen their
social studies programs. Its objectives are
to: a) enhance the rigor of the social
studies disciplines; b) build critical thinking,
problem solving, and participatory skills to
become engaged citizens; and c) align
academic programs to the Common Core
State Standards for English Language Arts
and Literacy in History/Social Studies.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3)
Framework

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3)
Framework
The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies
State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics,
Economics, Geography, and History is the product of a collaboration
among the following fifteen professional organizations committed to
the advancement of social studies education:
• American Bar Association
• American Historical Association
• Association of American Geographers
• Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools
• Center for Civic Education
• Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago
• Constitutional Rights Foundation USA
• Council for Economic Education
• National Council for Geographic Education
• National Council for History Education
• National Council for the Social Studies
• National Geographic Society
• National History Day
• Street Law, Inc.
• World History Association

Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources
and Using Evidence
DIMENSION 3 includes the skills students need to analyze information
and come to conclusions in an inquiry. These skills focus on gathering
and evaluating sources, and then developing claims and using
evidence to support those claims.
Students should use various technologies and skills to find information
and to express their responses to compelling and supporting questions
through well-reasoned explanations and evidence-based arguments.
Through the rigorous analysis of sources and application of
information from those sources, students should make the evidence-
based claims that will form the basis for their conclusions.

Indicators of Dimension 3
• Gathering and Evaluating Sources
• Developing Claims and Using Evidence

Gathering and
Evaluating Sources
Whether students are constructing opinions, explanation, or
arguments, they will gather information from a variety of sources and
evaluate the relevance of that information. In this section, students
are asked to work with the sources that they gather and/or are
provided for them. It is important for students to use online and print
sources, and they need to be mindful that not all sources are relevant
to their task.

Suggested K-12 Pathway
GatheringandEvaluatingSources

Developing Claims and Using
Evidence
This subsection focuses on argumentation. In contrast to opinions and
explanations, argumentation involves the ability to understand the
source-to-evidence relationship. That relationship emphasizes the
development of claims and counterclaims and the purposeful selection
of evidence in support of those claims and counterclaims. Students
will learn to develop claims using evidence, but their initial claims will
often be tentative and probing. As students delve deeper into the
available sources, they construct more sophisticated claims and
counterclaims that draw on evidence from multiple sources. Whether
those claims are implicitly or explicitly stated in student products, they
will reflect the evidence students have selected from the sources they
have consulted.

Suggested K-12 Pathway
DevelopingClaimsandUsingEvidence

The Historic Sense (1917)
In 1917, J. Carleton Bell noted that when speaking with history
teachers that one thought persists “I do not care to have my pupils
learn dates and events, but I am particularly anxious to have them
develop the historic sense.” As he questioned what this meant,
especially for the learner in a history classroom, he found an
eminent university professor of history who eloquently summed up
this thought:
• If two students are given a number of newspaper files and are asked to write
the history of a town for a five-year period, one will give a clear, intelligible,
well articulated account, with the various events and movements in due
perspective, with adequate emphasis on a few leading features and proper
subordination of details, while the other will have merely a hodge-podge of
miscellaneous facts. The one shows the historic sense, the other does not.
(p. 317-318)
Bell, J. C. (1917). The historic sense. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 8(5), 317-318.

Five Aspects of
the Historic Sense (1917)
1. The ability to understand present events in light of the past.
2. The ability to sift through the documentary record--newspaper
articles, hearsay, partisan attacks, contemporary accounts--
and construct "from this confused tangle a straightforward and
probable account" of what happened.
3. The ability to appreciate a historical narrative.
4. Reflective and discriminating replies to ‘thought questions' on
a given historical situation.”
5. The ability to answer factual questions about historical
personalities and events.
Bell, J. C., & McCollum, D.F. (1917). A study of the attainments of pupils in United States history. The Journal
of Educational Psychology, 8(5), 257-274.

Historical Habits of Mind
• Understand the significance of the past to their own lives, both private and public, and to their society.
• Distinguish between the important and the inconsequential, to develop the "discriminating memory" needed for a
discerning judgment in public and personal life.
• Perceive past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as
opposed to present-mindedness.
• Acquire at one and the same time a comprehension of diverse cultures and of shared humanity.
• Understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter, but also how their
consequences are shaped by the means of carrying them out, in a tangle of purpose and process.
• Comprehend the interplay of change and continuity, and avoid assuming that either is somehow more natural, or
more to be expected than the other.
• Prepare to live with uncertainties and exasperating, even perilous, unfinished business, realizing that not all
problems have solutions.
• Grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalization.
• Appreciate the often tentative nature of judgments about the past and thereby avoid the temptation to seize upon
particular "lessons" of history as cures for present ills.
• Recognize the importance of individuals who have made a difference in history, and the significance of personal
character for both good and ill.
• Appreciate the force of the nonrational, the irrational, the accidental, in history and human affairs.
• Understand the relationship between geography and history as a matrix of time and place, and as context for
events.
• Read widely and critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and
assertion, and thereby to frame useful questions.
The Bradley Commission on History in Schools. (1988). Building a history curriculum: guidelines for teaching history in schools. Washington
D.C.: Educational Excellence Network.

Creating Historical Thinkers
Historical “Habits of Mind”
• Novice vs. Expert Level Continuum
• Historical presentism
• Progression of time is preordained – clear start and finish
to history
• Progression of intelligence
• One cause for historical events – presented by the
textbook
• Learn from the past to avoid mistakes in the future
• One source and perspective is sufficient
Bradley Commission on History in Schools. (1995). Building a history curriculum: Guidelines for teaching history in
schools. Westlake, OH: National Council for History Education. p. 9.

Best Practices in History Instruction
• Create authentic questions
• Students must have opportunities to ask questions of
personal interest.
• Utilize a variety of sources
• A variety of sources (i.e. published documents, unpublished
documents, oral histories, visual documents, artifacts, etc.)
should be sought to answer the question posed.
• Examine the sources
• Each source must be examined to determine who constructed
it and why.
Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information
Age Publishing.

• Determine the context
• Context for the document is vital. A document taken out of context
can lead to invalid conclusions.
• Read the sources
• Sources should be read closely and efforts should be made to
“read between the lines.”
• Consider alternative perspectives
• Multiple alternative perspectives must be considered. Finding just
the polar extremes is not sufficient.
Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.

• Corroborate the sources
• Corroborating sources need to be found.
• Construct narratives
• Opportunities should be presented where students have a chance
to construct historical narratives utilizing the spectrum of sources,
while noting where gaps in the sources or the author’s knowledge
exist.
Waring, S. M. (2011). Preserving history: The construction of history in the K-16 classroom. Charlotte, NC:
Information Age Publishing.

What are Primary Sources?
1. What are Primary and Secondary Sources (make a list)
2. Leaving Evidence of our Lives (Mind Walk)
3. What is it? (Name and purpose)
• Introducing Artifacts to Students (and Teachers)
• Library of Congress
• eBay
4. How to Use Primary Sources (LOC - Green Handout)
• Primary Sources Analysis Tool
• Teacher's Guide to Analysis

Analyzing Photographs
Novice-LevelAnalysis

Bibliographic Information
• Title: Daily inspection of teeth and finger nails. Older pupils make
the inspection under the direction of teacher who records results.
This has been done every day this year. School #49, Comanche
County.
• Location: Lawton [vicinity], Oklahoma
• Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer
• Date Created/Published: 1917 April.
• Medium: 1 photographic print.
• Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-00667 (color digital file from
b&w original print) LC-USZ62-17510 (b&w film copy negative)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: LOT 7475, v. 3, no. 4780 [P&P]
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Analyzing Documents
LeadingTowardsExpert-LevelAnalysis

The SOURCES Framework
• Scrutinize the Fundamental Source
• Organize Thoughts
• Understand the Context
• Read Between the Lines
• Corroborate and Refute
• Establish a Plausible Narrative
• Summarize Final Thoughts

Waring,S.M.,&Scheiner-Fisher,C.(2014).UsingSOURCES
toallowdigitalnativestoexploretheLewisandClarkexpedition.
MiddleSchoolJournal,45(4),3-12.

Scrutinize Fundamental Source
First, allow the students to
examine a primary source
selected by the teacher as the
one source that is fundamental
to learning about the content
or subject to be learned.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to
Meriwether Lewis on June 20, 1803

Organize Thoughts
Second, have the students organize
their thoughts. Students should
think about what knowledge they
have about the content being
presented in the fundamental
source and the individual(s) who
constructed it. If a student needs
additional background information,
the teacher may provide narrative(s)
that better explains the underlying
historical content being covered.
This is a great time to incorporate
children’s and young adult literature.
Webcast video of Gerard
Gawalt, American History
specialist, Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress
(http://www.loc.gov/rr/progra
m/
journey/video/jefferson.ram)

Understand the Context
Third, check for comprehension of the context and the source that is
being examined. Students should monitor their thinking and be sure
the source is not taken out of context or viewed through lenses,
morals, and principles of today.

Read Between the Lines
Fourth, model and scaffold the act of “reading between the lines,”
which means that the students should not necessarily take whatever is
viewed at face value; rather, students should consider multiple
perspectives. And, students should think about motivations for the
construction and the intended audience of the source being examined.
Excerpt from the Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis on June 20, 1803

Corroborate and Refute
Fifth, use and/or find additional sources that will corroborate or refute
what is being presented in the fundamental source.
A map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior
parts of North America (1802)
Cipher from Thomas
Jefferson to Meriwether
Lewis, April 20, 1803

Establish a Plausible Narrative
Sixth, construct a plausible narrative from the data collected and
analyzed. The investigation and learning should continue during this
phase to locate additional sources and to append and modify
narratives as new information is discovered.
Excerpt from Meriwether Lewis’ Journal

Summarize Final Thoughts
To conclude, students should summarize any additional thoughts and
formulate questions for future investigation.

Web Resources
• Annenberg Learner - Teacher Professional Development
• Center for History and New Media
• DBQ Project
• Digital History
• eBay
• Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
• Library of Congress
• National Archives and Records Administration
• National Gallery of Art
• National History Education Clearinghouse
• National Portrait Gallery
• National Women's History Museum
• Our Documents - National Archives and Records Administration
• Smithsonian Source
• Teach US History
• The Constitutional Convention
• Why Historical Thinking Matters

http://www.sourcesconference.com

Thank you for your time!
Scott M. Waring, Ph.D.
University of Central Florida
Associate Professor of Social Science Education
Director of the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at UCF
swaring@ucf.edu

Webinar presentation TEACHING WITH PRIMARY SOURCES

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