Primary Source Archives.
The National Humanities Center provides a collection of primary sources that are compatible with Common Core Standards. These sources range from primary written documents, literary texts, and artwork.
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The Library of Congress provides a comprehensive collection of broad topics and ideas. Unfortunately the online collection represents only a small portion of the physical holdings, but still provides a great source of sources.
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The Smithsonian Source provides a productive search engine to find the desired primary source. The search engine requires a keyword, document type, and historical topic.
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The National Archives provides a variety of excellent sources to find primary sources. It includes a collection of primary sources, research tips, and helps in citing sources.
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Docs Teach by the National Archives selected thousands of primary source documents to bring the past to life as classroom teaching tools from the billions preserved at the National Archives. These include written documents, images, maps, charts, graphs, audio and video in our ever-expanding collection that spans the course of American history.
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Primary Source Analysis Tools.
Students will complete the given worksheet (below) to analyze the given political cartoon handout of Prohibition (right).
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Students will complete the given worksheet (below) to analyze the given written documents about "The Age" (left).
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Primary Source Lesson Examples.
In this activity, students will analyze documents pertaining to the woman suffrage movement as it intensified following passage of the 15th Amendment that guaranteed the right to vote for African American males. Documents were chosen to call attention to the struggle’s length, the movement’s techniques, and the variety of arguments for and against giving women the vote.
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Extending Suffrage to Women. |
The Great Gatsby. |
In order to appreciate historical fiction, students need to understand the factual context and recognize how popular culture reflects the values, mores, and events of the time period. Since a newspaper records significant events and attitudes representative of a period, students create their own newspapers utilizing primary source materials from the American Memory collections.
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