PrimaryandSecondarySources.ppt
- 1. Primary and Secondary Sources What are they?
- 2. KWL Charts: mention what you "Know," what you "Want to know," and what you have "Learned" about Primary and Secondary Sources.
- 3. As a class, discuss the following questions and Write the answers in your notebooks. • a) Are primary sources always unbiased and accurate? • b) Are secondary sources always unbiased and accurate? • c) If someone in the future wanted to study who YOU were and what YOUR life was like, what primary and/or secondary sources might they turn to?
- 4. Primary sources • A primary source is an original object or document; first-hand information. • Primary source is material written or produced in the time period that you may be investigating. • Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period.
- 5. Primary Source • Diaries and journals • Autobiographies • Speeches • Historical documents • Other Primary Sources would be • Birth Certificates • Government records • Deeds • Court documents • Military records • Tax records • Census records • Art • Sound Recordings and interviews are considered primary resources.
- 6. What is a Secondary Source? • A secondary source is something written about a primary source. • Secondary sources are written "after the fact" - that is, at a later date. • Usually the author of a secondary source will have studied the primary sources of an historical period or event and will then interpret the "evidence" found in these sources. • You can think of secondary sources as second-hand information.
- 7. Secondary Source • Think about it like this…. • If I tell you something, I am the primary source. If you tell someone else what I told you, you are the secondary source. • Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers, magazines, books or articles found that evaluate or criticize someone else's original research
- 8. Secondary Source • Almanacs, encyclopedias, history books (textbooks), Biography etc. are all secondary sources because they were written “after” the these events occurred.
- 9. Primary or Secondary Sources? • Newspaper and Magazine articles can be a primary or secondary sources. ▫ If the article was written at the time something happened, then it is a primary source. ▫ Example: The articles written on Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 are primary sources. ▫ However, if a reporter in 2009 wrote about George Washington’s inauguration using information written by someone else (1789), that would be a secondary source.
- 10. Differentiated Tasks • You have 20 min to work on your Tasks
- 11. Why Use Primary Sources? Advantages • Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period • these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give a very real sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era.
- 12. Primary Source Disadvantages • Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions. • Primary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple primary sources to find patterns • In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials.
- 13. Why Use Secondary Sources? Advantages • Secondary sources can provide analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. • Secondary sources are best for uncovering background or historical information about a topic and broadening your understanding of a topic by exposing you to others’ perspectives, interpretations, and conclusions • Allows the reader to get expert views of events and often bring together multiple primary sources relevant to the subject matter
- 14. Secondary Source Disadvantages • Their reliability and validity are open to question, and often they do not provide exact information • They do not represent first hand knowledge of a subject or event • There are countless books, journals, magazine articles and web pages that attempt to interpret the past and finding good secondary sources can be an issue