How to Properly Source a Document

For this activity, students will be required to think like a historian and source a document. A helpful tip before this activity begins is to conduct a class discussion centered around the following question, “How do historians uncover the past?” This discussion will allow students to share numerous opinions which will usually result in a student mentioning a document, artifact, speech, photograph, etc.

Using a spider map, students will take five essential historical questions to a document and represent their understanding of its importance. Students should choose a historical document or speech that will serve as a visual aid for their abstract written answers. This assignment’s focus is to have students think about the questions that are essential for historians to ask before they begin their historical investigation. For each question, students must describe why they believe these questions are important to ask. The questions that should be used for this activity are:

1. Who created the document?
2. What was happening when the document was created?
3. When was the source created?
4. Where was the document created?
5. Why was the document created?