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Primary Source Learning Routines

Home Primary Source Learning Routines

Discourse and Thinking for All Learners

Primary source learning routines are simple structures that guide student thinking and collaboration to promote learning from a text or other type of media. Because the learning routine is known and easy to remember, students can focus on asking questions, exchanging ideas, and building understanding rather than thinking about what they should be doing. Primary Source Learning Routines are easy to manage because they foster student independence. The routines make academic rigor fun for students, something they will look forward to doing in class.

Durable Learning Word Handout

Durable Learning Handout PDF

When is a source a primary source?
Why do primary sources help ALL students learn?
Where are primary source learning routines used within the established curriculum?
Who uses historical sources as a routine in their profession?
Naming Seven Types of Thinking

When is a source a primary source?

Big Idea

Primary sources are created near the time under study.

Investigative Question

When is a source a primary source?

Actions
  1. Read the information to the right and examine the source items.
  2. Consider these questions:
    • Why are these primary or secondary sources for this topic?
    • What do the items tell you about Christopher Columbus?
    • What don’t the items tell you about Christopher Columbus?
  1. Discuss: When is a source a primary source?
A primary source is something that was created at or near the time under study. A primary source is an original work written by someone who witnessed or wrote close to an event
 Epistola de insulis nuper inventisTITLE: Epistola . . . de Insulis Indie nuper inventis (Letter Concerning the Islands Recently Discovered. . . .)

Christopher Columbus
Epistola de insulis nuper inventis
Printed letter, Rome: 1493
Rare Book & Special Collections Division
Purchased, 1946

A secondary source is created using information provided by someone else. Secondary sources are often created with some distance from the event.
 TITLE:  Columbus taking possession of the new country.

TITLE:  Columbus taking possession of the new country.CREATED/PUBLISHED:  Boston, U.S.A. : Published by the Prang Educational Co., 1893. 1 print : chromolithograph, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

What do you think about the following sources?

  •  Is this a primary or secondary source?
  • What does this item tell you about Jackie Robinson?
  • What doesn’t this item tell you about Jackie Robinson?
Front cover of Jackie Robinson comic bookTitle: [Front cover of Jackie Robinson comic book].
Created/Published: c1951.
Summary: Shows head-and-shoulders portrait of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn Dodgers cap; inset image shows Jackie Robinson covering a slide at second base.
Microfilm frame of front page of Pittsburgh Courier (Washington Edition), April 19, 1947Title: Microfilm frame of front page of Pittsburgh Courier (Washington Edition), April 19, 1947].

Created/Published 1972.

Summary Shows full-length portrait of Jackie Robinson in Dodgers uniform; headlines read “Jackie Scores Winning Run,” “Robbie’s Bunt Turns Tide,” and “Jackie Romps Home From Second Base as 26,000 Cheer.”

  •  Is this a primary or secondary source?
  • What does this item tell you about Jackie Robinson?
  • What doesn’t this item tell you about Jackie Robinson?

Why do primary sources help ALL students learn?

Primary sources provide rigor, relevance, and access for all students with information and mysteries that challenge students to think, use their knowledge, and ask questions.

Election Day!

Election Day! Digital ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3a51845

Rigor

Have multiple meanings that can change over time.
As new discoveries are made, the past is interpreted and revised. Primary sources may support multiple and novel interpretations. Because there is no one correct answer; students are inspired to uncover their own interpretation of the source.

Relate to multiple subjects.
Our experiences in life are not neatly divided into subject areas. As fragments from real life, primary sources usually relate to many subjects. Learners may use their expertise from a particular subject to interpret and see details in a primary source.

Require reflection and demand the use of background knowledge and academic vocabulary.
Learners can refer back to the same primary sources many times to find new discoveries. Just one quick glance at a source won’t be enough for a learner. Learners will need to revisit and think about what they see in a primary source. This thinking process encourages learners to reflect on their understanding or a topic and make connections between their knowledge and experiences.


The ice breaks on the Moscow River, with the newly-rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the background. Vladimir Filonov, photographer. Copyprint, original taken in March 1998. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (24)

The ice breaks on the Moscow River.

Relevance and Access

Connect to personal experiences.
The first impulse that a learner has when looking at a primary source is connect what they see to their previous experiences. Making connections to previous knowledge and experiences is one of the most important factors in successful learning.

Raise curiosity.
Primary sources are fragments of life that have survived. Whether the source is a picture, letter, map, sound recording, or oral history, the source does not come to the learner with an interpretation. Primary sources inspire questions such as: “What is this?” “Why was it made?” and “What might this tell me?” Primary sources are real mysteries that learners with all levels of expertise can solve

Provide Access

Primary sources offer an object to look at and reference that can be viewed in multiple formats to accommodate learner needs, strengths, and interests. Primary sources contain multiple levels of complexity (text, background knowledge, and vocabulary) and can easily be modified in digital format to add supports and extensions to engage all learners.

Where are primary source learning routines used within the established curriculum?

Introduction Routines – use primary sources to help students recognize their current understanding, knowledge, and skills related to the content of the lesson.

Build relationships with the topic under study.

  1. spark interest and curiosity.
  2. connect topic to personal experiences.
  3. recognize prior subject area knowledge to topic.
  4. identify questions the primary sources inspire about the topic.
  5. use known academic vocabulary to make thinking visible to both student and teacher

Investigations Routines – challenge students to independently read, analyze, and interpret primary source(s) to consider the source’s impact on the subject under study. Investigations include comparisons among primary sources or other resources to consider multiple perspectives and validity.

Make Sense of the primary sources to learn about the topic under study:

  1. read: comprehend the message of the primary source by using word attack and vocabulary skills, comprehension strategies, and media literacy skills. (Read could be listen for an audio recording or view for an image).
  2. analyze: consider the purpose of the primary source, context,  and point of view.
  3. interpret: stretch thinking about the topic under study by checking to see how this information, confirms, challenges, or changes our previous thinking on the topic.
  4. question: identify questions for future research based on this investigation.

Performance Task & Assessment Routines – require students to use primary sources as evidence to explain their understanding of the topic under study in purposeful ways. Formal assessments offer an opportunity for students and teachers to see growth through student products, performances, or tests requiring use of primary sources to demonstrate understanding, knowledge, and skills.

Recognize Growth and Use Learning Productively

  1. reflect on and synthesize learning from Introduction and Investigations, recognizing how individual thinking has been confirmed, challenged, and sometimes changed.
  2. determine a useful product or performance to show thinking to others.
  3. use thinking, knowledge, and skills to create the product or performance.
  4. consider how well the product or performance makes thinking, knowledge, and skills visible.
  5. revise product or performance to increase the thinking, knowledge, and skills shown.
  6. wonder, “What questions do I have about the topic under study now?” “What are my questions about the methods used to learn more about the topic?”

We call these learning experiences routines because they require just a few steps and can easily be used in many units and across all subject areas and grades. Often using three verbs to give the students directions such as, Look, Label, Sort. Because the routines are easy to remember students can use them independently to support their own learning.

Who uses historical sources as a routine in their profession?

Primary source learning routines mirror methods used in professions. When learners use primary sources they are working with the same materials and using the same methods that professionals use on the job.

Architect

  • architectural drawings
  • photographs
  • receipts

Artist

  • art
  • photographs

Documentary Filmmaker

  • photographs
  • maps
  • oral histories
  • art

Economist

  • business reports
  • receipts
  • catalogs
  • invoices
  • advertisements

 

Historian

  • all types of sources

Lawyer

  • witness accounts
  • public records
  • financial reports
  • expert testimony
  • laws
  • constitution
  • legal records

Novelist

  • photographs
  • news articles
  • maps
  • oral histories

Public Health Official

  • death certificates
  • vaccine records
  • birth certificates

Scientist

  • books
  • articles
  • journals

Naming Seven Types of Thinking

As students use these routines, take time to name the specific actions that show they are thinking. Use the types of thinking and bullets of possible actions below to get started. The more teachers name and explicitly notice thinking, the better able students will be able to use their thinking skills independently. These thinking actions were developed from Richhart, R., M. Church, P. Palmer, & S. Tishman. (April, 2006). American Educational Research Association Conference. Thinking Routines: Establishing Patterns of Thinking in the Classroom.

Cognition, Thinking & Understanding – Harvard Project Zero

Curious
  • Wonder
  • Ask questions
  • Observe closely
  • Find problems
  • Be playful
Intellectually Careful
  • Evaluate Evidence
  • Alert for errors
  • Check for accuracy
  • Corroborate information
  • Justify opinions with evidence
Reflective
  • Compare a product to criteria
  • Evaluate a process
  • Seek understanding
  • Gather other opinions
  • Consider relationship between parts and a whole
  • Question results
  • Identify patterns
Strategic
  • Set goals
  • Take action
  • Evaluate and revise plans
  • Use knowledge to make decisions
  • Reason through problems
Creative
  • Create novel solutions
  • Make unusual connections
  • Combine ideas
  • Rearrange elements into new patterns
Adventurous
  • Explore alternative views
  • Open minded
  • Think with a wide scope
  • Seek understanding
Collaborative
  • Share ideas with others
  • Ask clarifying questions
  • Value the opinions of others
  • Build learning through interact

 

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