Do your students LOVE reading primary sources? Do they get so excited that they just can’t concentrate on anything else? Do they love reading and analyzing the English language of yesteryear?
Like many of you reading, I believe that students should be able to analyze primary sources in high school. They just should. As a government/politics nerd, I find myself gravitating to primary sources concerning the Constitution and other founding documents…the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and mostly THE FEDERALIST PAPERS!
Unfortunately, the vast majority of my students do not share my love of the Federalist Papers…sigh. They need encouragement, prodding, and above all DIRECTION AND GUIDANCE as they analyze these documents.
(Since I’ve flipped my classroom, I have the class time to effectively model primary source analysis techniques for my students, offer them guiding prompts, and most importantly be present while they are grappling with the source!!)
I’ll be honest. My students have struggled with this document, as most students would. They are currently reading the Federalist 10, which was written in 1787. The language of the document is not familiar to them, making reading the words, much less comprehending the meaning of the text, extremely challenging.
Here’s my primary source lesson plan…
- Share Federalist 10 with my students on a Google Doc
- Instruct students to highlight words in the text with which they are unfamiliar, and insert comments with the definitions on the document
- Assign Federalist 10 with Discussion Questions through Google Classroom
- Tell students to actively read the document, including their thoughts and summaries as comments in the margins
- As students are working on their document, open Google Chat on the document to allow students to ask for help without singling them out
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