Historical Way of Thinking

Primary Sources

• Newspaper articles• Journals• Autobiographies• Letters• Paintings• Pictures• Sculptures• News segments

• Eyewitness account• Interview• Facebook posts• E-mails• Tweets• Instagram pictures• Etc.

Primary Sources

Why are they useful for studying history?

Sourcing• What background information do we know

about the author or the source itself?– Leading Questions:• What is the author’s point of view?• Who wrote this?• When was it written?

• We’re trying to determine the reliability of the source– Example:• Would a Facebook post about the Colts written by a

Patriots fan be 100% trustworthy?

Contextualization

• What was the world like at the time this source was created?– Leading Questions

• What was different back then?• What else was going on at the time this source was created?

• Provides us a deeper understanding of the source and what it says– Example:

• According to ESPN.com, the average attendance for Colts games in 2007 was 55,531. In 2008, the average jumped to 66,300.

• How can contextualization help us explain this?

Close Reading

• How convincing is the source?– Leading Questions:• What evidence does the author use?• What information does the author leave out?

– Helps us decide if the source is useful– Example:• ESPN analyst Mike Ditka sent out a tweet that said,

“The Colts are the worst team in the NFL”• Is his argument convincing?

Corroboration

• Do other sources back up what this source says?– Leading Questions:

• What do other documents say?– Are they the same, or do they say something different?

– This will help us figure out whether or not we should believe it

– Example:• 15 out of 17 ESPN analysts have picked the Colts to finish

first in the AFC South division this year• Based on these sources, can we believe that the Colts will

be good this year?

Bias

• Nearly every primary source has bias– Finding the bias can help us in all 4 aspects of

Thinking Like a Historian– Always be looking for bias in primary sources!

Quick Review

1. Why do we “source” a document?– Find out if it is reliable

2. Why do we “contextualize” a source?– Get a deeper understanding of the source

3. Why do we use “close reading” while analyzing a source?– To determine whether or not the source is useful

4. Why do we “corroborate” a source?– To figure out if we should believe it or not

5. What should we always be looking for when we analyze primary sources?– Bias