Evaluating+a+Primary+Source

Key Vocabulary
 * Primary Source
 * Secondary Source
 * Economic
 * Document
 * Artifact
 * social

Take a look at the following video to get an idea of why finding and evaluating primary souces is essential. media type="custom" key="9996539" Evaluating primary sources is essential in the study of history. Understanding what a primary source is will be our first step!
 * Evaluating a Primary Source**

What is a Primary Source? A primary souce is an item that was created in the time period being referenced.It sounds pretty simple, right? Well this can be tricky because primary sources show only the part the creator of the souce wants you to see. This is the original bias in using primary souces. When evaluating primary sources a historian needs to be critical of what they are looking at. In order to be successful at this, practice is needed. :)

All sources and events in history have overall reoccuring themes. These themes can be catagroized in a simple acronym PERSIA. It is important to understand these themes in order to understand the context and purpose of any document and event that occurs in history. The following video will help you to remember and better understand what it means. media type="custom" key="9983759" align="center"

Lets play a game..... [] We are going to break up into 8 different groups to analyze documents inorder to tell the story of what happened. The question is to tell the story of Ludlow the Who, What, When, Where and How of the event.
 * Each group will be given one primary source from the list below.


 * Use the primary source organizer to evaluate the soruce.[[file:Graphic Organizer for Interpreting Primary Sources.doc]]
 * Each group write a breif history of events based only on your one source
 * pair with another group to evaluate eachothers history of events.
 * As a pair of groups write a revised history of events.
 * As a class try to write an account of history based on all histories that were written by individual groups.
 * Discussion as a class on the process citing the methods, feelings and ways that they wrote history of the events of Ludlow.
 * Why was your first History different from the History we wrote as a class?**