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Teaching Secondary Social Studies

Primary Sources

Finding Primary Sources

Primary resources are important when looking at the historical record of the past. Items that can tell us more about our history include:

Diaries and letters
Firsthand accounts
Interviews
Newspapers and magazines
Original Fiction
Photographs, paintings, drawings, maps
Video, film, sound recordings
Works of Art

Guides to help you find primary resources:

Primary Sources Online

Try some of these for images, journals, diaries, newspapers and other digital collections of primary materials:

Our Future, Our Past: The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project University of Calgary Digital Collections: navigate to Collections and select Our Future, Our Past.
Canada's Digital Collections
Alberta Folklore and Local History
Peel's Prairie Provinces
Glenbow Archives
Provincial Archives of Alberta
World Digital Library

Historical Thinking in the Classroom

The Historical Thinking Project
A web resource to encourage and promote historical thinking in the classroom. The site presents tasks and activities complete with rubics and student work examples. There are six concepts: establish historical significance, use primary sources, identify continuity and change, analyze consequences, view perspectives, and understand the moral dimensions.

Last Updated: Mar 22, 2024 3:37 PM
URL: https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/teaching-secondary-social-studies
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