Permit me to introduce you to one of my favorite assignments … and one which my students actually liked as well!
I had made a commitment to using primary sources as a central feature of my social studies units when I started teaching social studies in 2004 after switching from 13 years of teaching French. Maybe I was influenced by my training in teaching world languages, which promoted a value for “relia” and authentic documents in teaching language.
This task became a truly high-value asset in my lesson plans. Students became good at them and many would request one to do as a capstone task in a unit. … The critical thinking skills fostered by this kind of writing task were important building blocks for the kind of critique that they would in more advanced courses learn to do.
My first primary source analysis assignment, devised around 2005, looked a lot like a tax form. Students were guided through a series of mental tasks to analyze the source they were given. I managed to find a copy in my archives and it is linked below.
Looks like I created an “advanced” version as well:
Grading these really felt like I was some kind of IRS agent doing an audit. The task evolved to become an essay task. This made more sense in a lot of ways. For one thing, students were going to be graded on standardized tests based on their performance on essays. Regular essay writing was gradually becoming an important centerpiece of my courses through 2006 and 2007.
By 2016, the rubric for this task and its procedure had become finalized and fully developed. The rubric is linked below. In each unit of study, students had an extended primary source essay to examine. I assigned this even in grade six, although a shorter composition was expected for younger students. An example of a ninth grade version of this task is linked below, entitled “Journey of Faixan to India”.
- A source citation is given first in a modified format based on a style used by genealogists.
- A brief historical context is given to guide students in what they should consider about the time period. This is explicitly not to be used in the composition itself.
- An essay organizer is given next, stating explicitly what goes in each paragraph. The essay begins with a description of the source and its audience, followed by some relevant historical context and then a summary of the source. The final paragraph is an assessment of two to three factors affecting the reliability of the source. This was the longest paragraph and of great importance.
Students did well on these, possibly because they did one every month through all the years they had me as a teacher (which for some could be four years in a row). These were never homework — in fact, it was not allowed to do them outside class at all. During class working times, impromptu discussions developed around reliability issues and especially in global studies around translation issues. The absolute importance of understanding historical context became evident to them and I believe my students became adept at assessing the reliability of sources.
This task became a truly high-value asset in my lesson plans. Students became good at them and many would request one to do as a capstone task in a unit. The impromptu discussions that came about in class working periods were key to developing understanding. Applying the historical context to a lengthier primary source text fixed important chronologies, relationships, and turning points in students’ minds. The critical thinking skills fostered by this kind of writing task were important building blocks for the kind of critique that they would in more advanced courses learn to do.