Teaching and Learning with Primary Sources

Let's face it, we all have those students who are not interested in what we have to say about history.  Many of us with a great passion for history may have our feelings hurt when our students don't appreciate the finer things that the social studies have to offer, especially if you've spent several years studying the specifics so that you're overly qualified and overly eager to share these details of history with your students.  So the real question is: how do we get our students interested in history?  Two words: primary sources.  

Here is a great example of how to easily integrate primary sources such as posters into your social studies classrooms.

An easy way to get your students thinking in your social studies classes is approaching them using a totally different medium.  Try using primary source documents such as a diaries, political cartoons, or my personal favourite: propaganda posters!  I had been teaching about the home front during World War II and decided to do an entire lesson on propaganda posters over the course of two days, and my grade elevens loved it because it was different and put a new spin on how to interpret history.  

What I did: First, I created a powerpoint with little text but a lot of great examples of home front propaganda posters.  I went through each example with my students, carefully explaining the significance of the poster.  Now I obviously didn't just throw a bunch of various propaganda posters together.  I had sorted them into differing THEMES that the students would get to choose from when they began their own poster project so that they were already familiar with them.  I had divided the posters into 5 themes: rationing, women working, farming, recruitment and buying war bonds; all very important aspects of the home front during the war. 

Then, students created a poster based on which propaganda posters they liked or understood. Before students began their posters, I modelled an example for them that I had created. I reinforced that their poster had to be colourful, include an image and a slogan.  Students were given time to work in class on their posters, and were also given the option to draw their image, or create one from magazines I had brought into class.  They were excited because they got to be creative, they did not have to take notes, it was something very new, and they always told me they liked when I explained things to them because I was so excited about it. It pays off to be enthusiastic!    

The #1 question students asked:  "What does a slogan mean?"  I gave them examples of current advertisements they could relate to (such as clothing, footwear, or music), and then stated that the propaganda posters were doing the same thing: trying to convince YOU, the audience, to do or buy something, through a witty catch phrase.

The final products were fantastic.  Not only did every student get to express themselves in a different way, every poster was unique, very well done and showed me that they had understood what I was trying to convey to them.

So get creative and use primary sources in the classroom!

How have you used primary sources in your class?

Image: Propaganda Poster, Canadian War Museum 20070104-083