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Primary Sources for K-12 Educators

This guide is for K-12 educators seeking digital primary sources to use in their classrooms.
Using primary sources effectively in your classroom can be difficult. The following resources provide you with information on approaching history education and using primary sources to develop students historical literacy skills.

Websites

The Historical Thinking Project 
The Historical Thinking Project was designed to foster a new approach to history education — with the potential to shift how teachers teach and how students learn, in line with recent international research on history learning. This resource covers major concepts of historical thinking and offers practical resources for its application in the classroom.

SCIM-C Historical Inquiry
The SCIM-C strategy was developed to provide teachers with a tool to help students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to interpret historical primary sources and reconcile various historical accounts, in order to investigate meaningful historical questions. This resource covers the SCIM-M model and offers practical resources for its application in the classroom.


Books

Seixas, P., & Morton, T. (2013). The Big Six: Historical Thinking Concepts. Toronto: Nelson Education Canada.

Levstik, L. S., & Barton, K. C. (2005). Doing hHistory: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools. Mahwah, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Lévesque, S. (2008). Thinking Historically: Educating Students for the Twenty-first Century. Buffalo;Toronto;: University of Toronto Press.