This lesson introduces students to evaluating a document’s source information. Research suggests that historians source a historical document before they engage with its content. They consider who made it, why it was made, and when and where it was created. Historians then use this information as a lens for understanding the document’s content. Students, on the other hand, tend to ignore the source information and jump immediately into the content without considering this crucial context. This lesson asks students to use source information to reason about the strengths and limitations of four historical documents as evidence of the past.
Image: Mayan manuscript known as the "Dresden Codex," 1200-1250 CE. From the Library of Congress.
