Primary and Secondary Sources- Oh My!

While most fifth grade students feel fairly comfortable locating, reading and taking notes from secondary sources, it is equally important that they learn how to identify and use primary sources. Often photographs, documents, letters, etc. get overlooked as amazing sources of information.

After giving students a real life example requiring them to think about which source of information would provide the best information for the situation at hand, students then learned the definition of both primary and secondary sources of information.

From there, students sorted various sources (biography, video, textbook, to name a few) into primary or secondary categories using the SmartBoard vortex activity template.

A good follow-up to this introductory lesson requires students to analyze a specific primary source (perhaps one related to a social studies or reading unit of study) in order to determine information about a specific time and place in history.

Students walked away from this initial lesson understanding the validity of each type of source of information, but that not every source of information is the best for every research situation.

Fifth grade students sort sources into either primary or secondary categories.