Thinking Like a Historian: Sources

Original records produced by the people who participated in and witnessed the past.

• Primary Source

• Secondary Source

Documents, texts, images, and objects about an event created by someone who was not present at the time of the event.

• Primary Source

• Secondary Source

An autobiography is a _____________.

• Secondary

• Primary

• Tertiary

• Lie

Secondary sources are better than primary sources?

• True

• False

You are studying September 11, 2001. Which of the following would be a secondary source?

• A newspaper article written on 09/11/01.

• A newspaper article written on 9/11/22.

• Transcripts from phone calls made out of the World Trade Centers on 09/11/01.

• Video footage of the actual attacks.

Your textbook is an example of a

• primary source

• secondary source

• artifact

What is an inference?

• an artifact, a document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, a recording, or other source that was created at the time of study

• created later by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events researched

• prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair

• an educated guess based on evidence & prior knowledge

If students are able to:

Identify the author’s position on the historical event

• Identify and evaluate the author’s purpose in producing the document

• Hypothesize what the author will say before reading the document

• Evaluate the source’s trustworthiness by considering genre, audience, and purpose

• Contextualization

• Sourcing

• Corroboration

• Close Reading

A 2015 Broadway musical depicting the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States

• Primary

• Secondary

The Parisian Life, an 1892 painting by Juan Luna.

• Primary

• Secondary