Teaching with Primary Sources

In the future, I would like to work as an elementary-level general education teacher. Primarily working with younger grades, I lean more towards teaching in the first grade level. Primary resources are the materials of history that were created during that time. These sources encourage students to develop their critical thinking skills by analyzing raw materials that have not been altered. These resources cultivate wonder and curiosity by providing students with first hand information that is accurate to the time they are learning about. These resources are often times unfamiliar to students, usually receiving information that has been published times and times again by different authors. These tools also offer students the ability to compare the past and the present as accurately as possible. The use of primary resources also allow students to make their own interpretations, rather than being exposed to others early on. Students are able to bring in their own perspectives and knowledge into a piece of unbiased information, to make their own opinions of what it means. These authentic materials help students to engage in their learning and connect history to real world experiences.

Here is an example of the primary sources we plan to use for our lessons:

Aztec Codex

Old Map of Mexico (1846)

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Lesson 1 (Story Maps)

Visual Agenda This was the first lesson that was taught, where students were introduced to story maps. The lesson started with a short introduction and reading survey, where students shared their opinion of books. We reviewed the agenda so students had an idea of what we will be doing for today's lesson. After reviewing the visual agenda, we went through the vocabulary. The vocabulary consisted of the story elements that will be important for the story map activity (setting, characters, problem, outcome, and theme). All of the terms were covered and revealed as we transitioned between words. All students were given an opportunity to reveal a word. The term and definition was read aloud by the teacher, which were then repeated chorally with the students. Vocabulary with Visuals Once having an idea of what the elements mean, we went over an example story map. The example...

Lesson 2 Reflection

For our second lesson, we looked into the History of Mexico. During this lesson, we focused into the Aztec period of 1347 to 1522. We started out the lesson with a cut-and-paste pretest to see what the students already knew. For this pre-test students cut out either a short definition or a photo and matched it with the vocabulary words. We then moved to talking about our vocabulary words. The poster was covered up with papers, so students would be able to focus in on one term at a time, while also having the opportunity to reveal the next word. Each word and definition, after being read by us, would be read together as a group to further their comprehension. Once we established an understanding of the vocabulary words, we showed students examples of primary sources. These were Aztec codex's from over 500 years ago, where students would analyze the imagery and discuss each column of the I...

Teaching With Primary Resources

While we were creating our lessons on our country Mexico, we used a lot of primary sources. In our first lesson, geography, we had students compare and contrast an old and a new map of Mexico. The primary resource that we used for this lesson was the old map. We then use an I see, I think, I wonder chart to analyze and compare the two maps. For our old map, we completed the chart together and for the new map, students worked in partners to fill it out. Our students did really well with filling out this chart, so we decided to use it again for our second lesson, history. The primary resources that we used for this lesson was examples of Aztec codex's. We had three different ones for this activity. For the first two, they were given the photos and had to work together to figure out what the images meant. After sharing their ideas, we would reveal what each symbol represented. They then did the same for the la...

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