Topic: Primary Source Literacy

This media literacy classroom activity centers on a video we developed with the RAC’s Audiovisual Archivist Brent Phillips. It includes clips of audiovisual documents related to voter education, which can serve as primary sources to view, analyze, and discuss in a classroom setting. The classroom activity guide below is available as a PDF download at…

Grades 3-6. Introduces students to archives, primary sources, and secondary sources. This flexible unit includes nine lessons in which students document their own learning experiences by creating, describing, and organizing primary sources. Each student’s personal papers are aggregated into a class archive that is then described in a mock finding aid.  View this resource on…

High school to graduate levels. This workshop places students into the role of program officers during the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing on twenty-two records from the Rockefeller Archive Center collections, the project explores philanthropic activities during a period of ideological and geopolitical tensions. View this resource on OER Commons.

Grades 4-8. This unit guide provides a lesson-to-lesson foundation for teaching about primary sources, and how to evaluate and cite sources, do document analysis, and formulate and find answers to a research question. View this resource on OER Commons.

Grades 4-8. The primary sources in this set can be used for inquiry-based learning exercises and projects. Each document falls under the umbrella topic of voter education. Suggested projects that make use of this set’s primary sources are included for the educator as a springboard for research-based projects. View this resource on OER Commons.

Grades 4-8. This set of curated primary sources can be used for inquiry-based learning exercises and projects. Each document falls under the umbrella topic of tenements and immigration. Suggested projects are included for the educator as a springboard for research-based projects. View this resource on OER Commons.