Teaching with Primary Sources at the College Level

Scholarship tells us that students learn best by doing. Because primary sources are the raw materials of our discipline, they may be the history teacher’s best tool for engaging students in meaningful active learning. But what do we ask students to do with primary sources? These presenters explore methods for using primary sources to advance students’ historical thinking skills at different stages in their intellectual development. We will discuss our experience using a range of activities to accomplish these goals, including but not limited to single-source close readings, identifying conflicting points of view within source sets, articulating confusions about sources, crafting historical questions that emerge from sources, locating sources in electronic databases, and designing primary source-based research projects.