Analyzing Primary Sources

[Music] hello welcome to history notes - I'm Trey Hyman and today we're gonna be discussing primary sources and how to analyze them so in a sense learners can act as detectives as an attorney and as a jury when they're analyzing primary sources they have to look for clues ideas and evidence to support and form their conclusion we're going to discuss all of that in this video so before we begin we have to answer the question what is a primary source a primary source is an original document object or artifact that provides first-hand evidence of a

historical event object person or work of art an example of a primary source would include the Declaration of Independence or the top-hat of Abraham Lincoln a non-example or what we would call as a secondary source would be a history textbook or maybe a magazine or an encyclopedia now that we know what a primary source is how do we analyze that primary source well if you're working with a document the first thing you need to do is read the document and as you're reading it you need to annotate that means if I see any key words

or key terms maybe even key phrases or big ideas I need to circle or underline or even highlight those maybe even jot down a few notes about those if I see any unfamiliar words or any unfamiliar terms look them up I need to define those that's going to give some context it's going to help me understand what that document is saying and overall what that document is about I need to think like a detective and when a detective arrives at a crime scene he's looking at all the information looking at all the key details analyzing

every bit of it looking for clues so that he can use it as evidence to build his case another thing to consider is what do you already know about the primary source do you know of any other historical information that's related to it do you know of anything that was going on during the time that that document was originally created all that information can be very useful in your process of trying to analyze that document it's going to help you understand what it's talking about it's like an attorney he's not only using the information that

the detective gave him but he's also using information that maybe witnesses are giving him he's going to use all the information that he can get to help them better understand what's going on and to help build that case after you have read the primary source you've made all your notes and you've considered everything you know about the primary source you can begin forming your conclusion a few questions that help you through this process would be one what did you learn from the primary source and two how has the primary source shaped or reshape your understanding

about the topic or the idea that you were studying think like a jury the jury uses all the information that they're being presented with to form their conclusion or their verdict you as a learner are doing the same thing you're using all the information that you have at your disposal to form your conclusion a few thoughts to stash in your notebook would be these one read the primary source thoroughly to consider your prior knowledge about the primary source what do you already know about it and three form your conclusion and use textual evidence please comment

below if you have any questions or thoughts thank you for watching and I'll see you next time history notes -