This model activity is an example of an Introduction Primary Source-Based Learning Experience.

Understanding Goal Understanding Goal

Primary sources inspire new discoveries that challenge, confirm, and sometimes change our thinking.

Directions

Use a primary source image and differentiated investigative questions to draw students into a discussion based on the "big idea" of the curricular unit.

  1. Choose an image related to something that you teach by clicking on a subject below. View all images and bib records in this 11 MB PDF File.
  2. Engage students in a discussion about the image through the investigative question.
  3. Challenge students to connect their learning to large-scale themes or understanding goals.

Best Instructional Practices

Select a Subject Below to View Images

Advertising

  • Coffee label
  • Collie's special delivery'

Health / P.E.

  • A good lunch - one hot dish, meat, vegetables - sandwich - fruit - milk : WPA school lunch.
  • Couple posed in swim suits / photo by Harry M. Rhoads.
  • Back cover of Jackie Robinson comic book
  • Tennis player, Edith Parker, running on the backcourt during a match
  • Dancing, as a means of physical education; with remarks on deformities, and their prevention and cure. By Mrs. Alfred Webster ...

Mathematics

  • The jubilee of knowledge! What mathematicians have pronounced mathematically impossible, I have demonstrated to be mathematically certain! [1865].
  • Typus arithmeticae
  • Haarlem, Amsterdamsche Poort
  • 'New math' for adults
  • A table embracing all the elementary combinations of numbers in addition ... Boston Brewer & Tileston [c. 1864].
  • Hunter shooting at birds in flight with lines indicating how the calculus method makes analysis of movement possible, mathematicians conversing at left, and title page
  • Exhibit panel / L.W. Hine.
  • Marmaduke Multiply. (p. 6)
  • The ice breaks on the Moscow River, with the newly-rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior in the background.

Performing Arts

  • Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball performing a skit dressed as cleaning women
  • Katherine Dunham, dancer, three-quarter length portrait, facing left, wearing dance costume
  • Charles Dillingham and Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., present a musical entertainment entitled The century girl.
  • God Bless America'
  • Portrait of Louis Armstrong, Carnegie Hall, New York, N.Y., ca. Apr. 1947
  • Colville girls singing in choir, St. Mary's Mission School, Omak, Washington, 1959
  • Star spangled banner / John Stafford Smith [sheet music]

Science

  • The Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers Notebook by Alexander Graham Bell, from 1875 to 0, 1876
  • Photographs depicting mangroves in the Everglades, 1925-1929.
  • Seismicity of the earth, 1960-1980 / by Alvaro F. Espinosa, Wilbur Rinehart, and Marie Tharp, 1981 ; world ocean floor panorama by Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp, c1977.
  • Photographs depicting animals, 1921-1931.
  • Tower Falls and Sulphur Mountain, Yellowstone / TM ; Prang's American Chromo.
  • Norman Ross of the division of Paleontology, National Museum, preparing the skeleton of a baby dinosaur some seven or eight million years old for exhibition
  • 1901 glider being flown as a kite, Wilbur at left side, Orville at right; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
  • Lummus Cotton Gins
  • Tornado, Lebanon, Kansas
  • San Francisco earthquake and fire, April 18, 1906 / [production company unknown]

Visual Arts

  • Spinner Play
  • Princeton / H.G. Laskey.
  • Missing
  • Under the Horse Chestnut Tree
  • Brooks Breece of Dale City, Va., waves the American flag on a hill overlooking Interstate 95 south and U.S. Route 1
  • Crazy quilt, detail

Foreign Language

  • El amor de madre, no hay cosa como la madre en la vida transitoria; que la tierra le sea leve y dios la lleve a su gloria
  • Copy Photo: Pancho Villa, Alvaro Obregon and John J. Pershing, August 27, 1914
  • Eiffel Tower and park, Paris, France
  • Journée des Régions Libérées. Aprés la victoire, au travail!! Aidez-nous
  • Freiheit, Friede, Arbeit. Wählt die Deutsche Volkspartei in Bayern / Zietara
  • Virgil, Aeneid

Language Arts

  • Once upon a time / Whitley.
  • Little Miss Muffet ... reading a picture book ... / Gregg.
  • Folger Library copy work. Shakespeare portrait by Zucchero
  • Whitman's Cardboard butterfly
  • The John Steinbeck Map of America
  • The Voyage of the Pequod from thebook Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
  • Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784) Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. . .
  • Langston Hughes (1902-1967) to Walter White, October 29, 1925
  • Jack and the beanstalk

Other Interesting Images

  • Nurse the baby : Your protection against trouble : Inform yourself through the Health Bureau publications and consult your doctor / K.
  • A man fishes through the ice in Kostroma, northeast of Moscow, against the backdrop of the historic Ipatiev monastery.
  • A woman prays in the icon corner in the HIV-positive ward of the 2nd Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Moscow.
  • In the Rogue's Gallery
  • 1992 New Hampshire State Winner; Around America
  • Breaking ice to water mules on on Rex Inman's farm near Estherville, Iowa. This farm of 360 acres is rented from company by tenant
  • Utes--Chief Sevara [i.e. Severo] and family

Professional Studies

  • Building the body of an automobile, Detroit, Mich.
  • The Favorite
  • Carpenter at work on Douglas Dam, Tennessee (TVA)
  • Train to be a nurse's aide : Phone your boro Civilian Defense Volunteer Office.
  • Glascock boy
  • The New York Cook Book.

Social Studies

  • Give me liberty, or give me death!' Patrick Henry delivering his great speech on the rights of the colonies, before the Virginia Assembly, convened at Richmond, March 23rd 1775, concluding with the above sentiment, which became the war cry of the revolution.
  • Concord Massachusetts Children to Abraham Lincoln, April 1864 (Petition urging Lincoln to free all slave children)
  • Betsey [sic] Ross
  • Statue of Liberty, New York City
  • Washington Monument. Night view of Washington Monument showing Bureau of Engraving and Printing and light from the Library of Congress
  • Columbus taking possession of the new country
  • Virginia / discovered and discribed by Captayn John Smith, 1606 ; graven by William Hole.
  • Congressional Scales, a True Balance
  • Ulysses S. Grant's commission as lieutenant general signed by Abraham Lincoln, 10 March 1864. (Ulysses S. Grant Papers)
  • Juan Ponce de Leon
  • Dark laughter. Now I aint so sure I wanna get educated,
  • Mrs. Rosa Parks being fingerprinted in Montgomery, Alabama
  • The Library of Congress
  • Remember Your First Thrill of American Liberty. Your Duty--Buy United States Government Bonds
  • Children playing 'ring around a rosie' in one of the better neighborhoods of the Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois