Appendix C: Selecting and Using Primary Sources

It is strongly recommended for educators to use of primary sources in order to give students a sense of how people in the past thought about the events of their time and how they lived their daily lives. This framework follows that practice and includes many of the documents listed in earlier frameworks. 

The Internet has ever-growing repositories of primary source material. Appendices D and E present a selection of these sources, highlighted at appropriate places in the content standards. Teachers may want to use excerpts, and in lower grades, to guide students through complex texts by reading them to or reading along with students.

Appendix D contains primary sources in United States history, divided into two groups.  The first group, called Key Primary Sources in United States History, includes materials that all students should encounter and in some cases revisit in the years they study United States History and Civics. In this group are documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, and Presidential speeches from George Washington to Barack Obama, as well as significant sources related to turning points in the history of the nation. The second group, called Suggested Primary Sources includes additional sources – text, video, maps, works of art, photographs - to contrast with, or shed a new perspective on the Key Sources.

Appendix E contains Suggested Primary Sources in World history. They begin with the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh (c.2150-1400 BCE), include selections from major world religions and from major civilizations and nations through the 21^st century. Appendix E is intended to be a guide, not a prescription: teachers may substitute other sources that they believe will be better choices for their students. 

Many websites in the Supplement offer primary sources, background articles, and instructional strategies, as well as full curriculum units. A selection of the most comprehensive sites for grades 6-12 social studies and interdisciplinary instruction are:

New Hampshire Resources:

• Moose on the Loose from the New Hampshire Historical Society

• The Remedial Herstory Project a collection of packaged inquiries and OER resources on women’s history for US, World History, Government and Economics.

National Resources:

• Library of Congress has resources for Teaching with Primary Sources, a major initiative.

• Digital History (National Endowment for the Humanities, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Chicago History Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, University of Houston, National Park Service) Site contains links to many primary documents, images, multimedia, music. 

• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Open-source materials from Unites States public libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions Curriculum materials include Primary Source Sets on a variety of topics in history and literature, each of which includes 10-15 sources, (videos, letters, oral histories, photographs, sheet music). Exhibitions contain short text on a topic and 5-10 visual images from public libraries and archives across the United States.

• EDSITEment (National Endowment for the Humanities) Comprehensive collections of primary sources and curriculum units and links to other sites in the humanities

• Historical Inquiry (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)Site devoted to historical inquiry using primary sources such as texts, artifacts, photographs, audio, video, multimedia; describes a instructional strategy for inquiry and interpretation: summarizing, contextualizing, inferring, monitoring, and corroborating.

• Internet History Sourcebooks Project (Fordham University) Collection of documents from world and U.S. history, searchable by topic, period, civilization

• Norman B. Leventhal Map Center (Boston Public Library) Digitized historic map collection searchable by location and historical period and grade level

• National History Education Clearinghouse (George Mason University)

• Sections on content in world and U.S. history and effective practices such as historical thinking, using primary sources

• Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)

• Extensive online collections of artifacts from around the world

• Smithsonian Learning Lab Site designed to give educators access to all images in all Smithsonian collections, searchable by topic or collection; sections for curating a personal collection of annotated images and creating curriculum

• The Digital Inquiry Group Sections on content in world and U.S. history and effective practices. Reading Like a Historian (historical thinking); Beyond the Bubble (assessment); Civic Online Reasoning (news and media literacy).

• The National Women’s History Museum a resource for primary material on women in US History.

• Women in the American Story a resource for primary sources about women in US History from the New York Historical Association. 

• Asia for Educators from Columbia University is packed with primary sources on Asian history. 

• Time Maps Atlas of historical maps searchable by region and date; encyclopedia searchable by topic, major civilizations, events, empires; lesson plans and alignments to Advanced Placement courses

• World History Matters (George Mason University) A portal to many sites for world history and history of the arts.

There are many useful collections of primary sources for history in print and online. A few include

• The American Yawp (Open Source United States History Textbook) Collaboratively written U.S. textbook with extensive text and visual primary sources; updated annually

• Brown, Victoria Bissell, and Shannon, Timothy J., eds. (2012). Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American History. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s

• Ravitch, Diane, and Thernstrom, Abigail. The Democracy Reader. (1992) New York: Harper Perennial

• Reilly, Kevin. (2000). Readings in World Civilizations: Volume 2, the Development of the Modern World, 3^rd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

• Riley, Philip F., Gerome, Frank, Myers, Henry, Chong-Kun Yoon. (2006). The Global Experience: Volume 1: Readings in World History to 1550; Volume 2: Readings in World History Since 1500, 5^th ed. Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall 

Stearns, Peter N. Grieshaber, Erwin P., Belzer, Allison Scardino (2012). Documents in World History, Volume 1, The Great Traditions: From Ancient Times to 1500; Volume 2, The Modern Centuries: From 1500 to the Present. Pearson Digital