Reading a primary source

Ages 13 to 17 Read alone · about 45 minutes

Read together

A primary source comes from the time and place you are studying: a letter, a diary, a law, a photograph, an interview. A secondary source, such as a textbook, is written later about the past.

Historians ask three questions of every source. Sourcing: who wrote it, when and why? Context: what was happening then? Corroboration: do other sources agree or disagree?

No source is neutral. A soldier, a king, a missionary and a farmer will describe the same event differently. Good readers notice who is missing from the record as well as who is speaking.

Do it

1. Choose a primary source: a historic letter, a speech, or a family document. With a grown-up, find it in a library or an archive's online collection.
2. Answer the three questions: who wrote it, when and why; what was happening; what other sources could confirm or challenge it.
3. Find a second source on the same event from a different point of view. Compare them. What do they agree on? Where do they differ?
4. Write a paragraph: what can we trust from the source, and what should we question?

Talk about it

• Who is missing from this source?
• What would change if someone else had written it?

For the grown-up

Reading sources critically is among the most valuable habits history teaches, and it helps with news and the internet too. The approach of sourcing, contextualisation and corroboration comes from research by Sam Wineburg and colleagues at Stanford. Choose sources that suit your child's maturity, as some primary sources contain upsetting content.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Temple University Press, 2001)
• Stanford History Education Group, Reading Like a Historian curriculum

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.