Primary sources can enrich curriculum and engage students if used properly.  However, introducing students to using primary sources can be a daunting task.  This summer Beneficial National History Day Fellow Claire Frosch, created a multi-purpose lesson in this unit to introduce students to primary and secondary sources, to introduce the idea of multiple historical perspectives and to build skills for historical analysis.

Two things are really neat about it:
• You can substitute different primary sources from HSP’s Digital Library.
• The strategies in this lesson are based upon those found Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, March Church and Karin Morrison and based upon neuroscientific research at Project Zero at Harvard.

Give it a try and let us know how it worked for you!