Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes

5th Grade Social StudiesAmerican History5 pages

About this worksheet

These 5-page guided notes teach 5th grade students to question a historical source before they trust it. Students fill in blanks for the four sourcing questions (who made it, when, where, and for what audience). They then apply them three times: to a 1770 Sons of Liberty broadside printed after the Boston Massacre, a soldier's private diary from Valley Forge, and Thomas Jefferson's 1803 letter to Meriwether Lewis. Each source ends with a usefulness judgment. The notes match C3 Framework indicators D2.His.13.3-5 and D2.His.11.3-5, and the answer key gives every blank plus model judgments.

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Page 1 of 5

Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes: American History - page 1
Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes: American History - page 2
Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes: American History - page 3
Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes: American History - page 4
Analyzing Historical Sources Guided Notes: American History - page 5

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Curriculum objectives covered

D2.His.13.3-5

“Use information about a historical source, including the maker, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose to judge the extent to which the source is useful for studying a particular topic.”

All three source boxes, where students record maker, date, place, and audience, then rate usefulness for a stated topic such as conditions at Valley Forge.

D2.His.11.3-5

“Infer the intended audience and purpose of a historical source from information within the source itself.”

The broadside example, where the audience blank (local colonists) leads to its purpose of making them angry at the British, and the diary written only for the soldier himself.

What's inside this worksheet

The Four Big Sourcing Questions

Six blanks. Students write that historians act like a detective, that background decides if a source is useful as evidence, and the question words Who, When, Where, and audience.

Worked Example

Students fill in the Sons of Liberty, 1770, Boston, and local colonists for a Revolution-era broadside. Then they explain why the poster shows how colonists felt but may not be reliable on the exact facts.

Practicing the Routine

The same four blanks for a diary written by a soldier named George at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777. Students judge how useful a private entry is for learning about conditions at the camp.

Your Turn

Students analyze Jefferson's 1803 letter with instructions for the trip west. They rate how useful it is for studying the goals of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

How teachers use it

Model then release

Do section 2 together on the board. The broadside idea, useful for feelings but not for exact facts, is what students need before they judge the diary alone.

Heads-up

Every blank in sections 2 to 4 repeats a word from the Source line above it, and section 4 even prints "(Washington, D.C.)" beside the capital blank. Grade the usefulness judgments, not the blanks.

All year

Keep the four questions from section 1 as an anchor chart. Students can run the same Who, When, Where, Audience routine on the primary sources in your textbook.

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