Huntington Library: Using Primary Sources in the Classroom [Pdf]

Engage your middle schoolers with Pastor Martin Niemoller's famous poem that begins, "First they came for the communists." Now that you have their attention, send learners to the various work stations you created to have them explore...

Scholars study a historical photograph to make predictions of what happened right after the picture was taken. They research a variety of different topics and use primary sources to answer questions about common food, fashion trends, and...

Historians explain what happened during the Holocaust, but only primary sources portray the true horror of places such as Auschwitz. Using accounts from those who survived the camps, as well as a Nazi government official's memoirs, class...

By reviewing and analyzing these nine selected points from Martin Luther's 95 Theses, your young historians will discern the major tenets of the revolutionary challenge made against the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. This is...

These student worksheets and activities help students analyze many different types of primary source documents. Life histories, objects, and photographs are all used to engage students.

Primary sources—even those that seem mundane—offer a window into those who experienced history. Using a Red Cross map offered to soldiers stationed in Paris after World War II alongside worksheet questions, scholars consider what life...

A website with lesson plans for various grade levels on slavery, using primary sources.

A picture speaks a thousand words, no matter how old! Scholars use political cartoons from the era of Prohibition and the Temperance Movement to analyze what, a primary document (in this case, a bootlegger's notebook) is telling them...

What would be in your life's scrapbook? Scholars use short video clips, primary and secondary documents, and photos to investigate a 1909 scrapbook. They analyze and uncover what the Rogue Book tells them about the past in Western...

Suggestions for using primary sources.