Using Primary Source Documents
The use of primary source documents in AP Classrooms has never been more important. If the 2021 Exam is going to be anything like the 2020 Exam where the Document Based Question (DBQ) was the entirety of the test, students need to consistent practice with interpreting and analyzing primary sources. The importance of these documents is clear but the process of introducing these documents, creating consistent practice opportunities and figuring out which ones to use is a lot more complicated. The following is a summary of the approach I take in introducing primary sources to my students.
How to get started?
Reading can be intimidating, even for high school juniors in an Advanced Placement class. For this reason, the first documents that I always start with are images or pictures. This serves the purpose of getting students to realize that just about anything can be a primary source document as long as it was created contemporaneously to the era they are studying. Since I teach the course chronologically, the images that I start with are usually drawings and engravings of Europeans’ first contact with Native Americans or pictures of artifacts that can yield information on how Native Americans interacted with their environment. Pictures and images are a low pressure and approachable way to introduce primary sources. My goal at the beginning of the year is to build confidence in students, especially those who have not taken an Advanced Placement level class the previous year. By using images, students shed the fear that they would misunderstand a document if there is unfamiliar vocabulary or complicated syntax.
How frequently should primary documents be used?
As frequently as possible. The more often that students are exposed to them, the more comfortable they will feel when they see them on the AP Exam at the end of the school year. Not only that, but they will be able to refer to or cite certain documents they encounter over the course of the year when they are making arguments in short answer responses or Long Essay Questions. In the notes packets that accompany each set of slides on APUSHslides.com there is always at least one primary source that is related to the topic of the slides. Even with one per set of notes that means they will have been exposed to 52 primary sources over the course of the first semester alone!
How do we “analyze” primary sources?
I found the answer to this question very difficult, especially when I started teaching APUSH. Beyond gaining basic meaning from a document and figuring out what it was saying, I didn’t know how to get my students beyond the basic level of understanding. After my first year of teaching the course I became familiar with all the acronyms like SOAPSTone, APPARTS, or HIPPO that help gain further meaning from each document. But then the question shifted to which one was best to use. While each of those acronyms helps students analyze documents further, I wanted to make sure the analysis tool that students used would be practical for when they took the AP Exam.
Another AP teacher at my school shared his method, which I have now adopted. It is based solely on the rubric from the DBQ. The requisites for points on the DBQ include a description “rather than simply quote” of the document in addition to “how or why (rather than simply identifying) the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, or audience is relevant to an argument.” From this he teaches his students to provide an attribution plus HAPP when analyzing documents.
The attribution is the description of the document, a sentence or phrase that shows they understand the contents of the document.
H - is for Historical Situation. This is where students can put the document in a larger historical context. They can think of events or situations which caused the document to be created.
A - is for the Intended Audience. Not only should they know who the document is targeting, but also how that shapes the message of the document.
P - is for Point of View. This may sometimes require knowledge of the person who created the document, but it is not merely identifying information. Again, students should think about how their identifying information affects the message of the document.
P - is for Purpose. Sometimes the purpose of a document is very clear or explicitly stated in the document. Additionally to its stated, or inferred, purpose, they can analyze if the document was successful in its purpose.
How do I know which documents to use with my students?
The College Board Course and Exam Description (CED) hasn’t created a list of primary sources that every student should know, and it’s not likely that they ever will. So when it comes to using primary sources in class there isn’t a “right” answer to which documents you should use over others. The primary goal is not to have a set of documents memorized that are likely to show up on a DBQ, the goal is for students to have mastered the skills necessary so that they can approach any document on test day.
With that said, there are some ways that can help you choose the documents that put analysis and interpretation skills to work and can increase understanding required content. The first place I look to are the learning objectives for each topic. While there won’t be specific primary sources listed in this part of the CED, it narrows my search for documents that can help achieve the objective.
Here is an example from the first historical period. Topic 1.5 has learning objective E: Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time. Based on this objective I want to find primary sources which show social and economic structures in the Spanish Empire. One of the important social structures in this period is the castas system. So I use a panel painting which defined each castes ancestry.
In this example I am able to introduce a primary source to my students that is approachable, as it is a painting with a message that is straightforward. Additionally it allows me to reinforce the learning objective from the CED.
An example of primary source text that can be used for this same learning objective are the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Gínes de Sepúlveda. Their debate over the use of Native American labor in the encomienda system more directly addresses the development of social and economic structures created in New Spain.
Las castas. Casta painting showing 16 racial groupings, likely not depicting social reality. Anonymous, 18th century, oil on canvas, 148×104 cm, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico.
Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta
Cover page of a summary of the debate concerning the subjugation of Indians.
Retrieved from https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/resource/bartolomé-de-las-casas-debates-subjugation-indians-1550
Translation of text:
“Here is contained a dispute, or controversy between Bishop Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, or Casaus, formerly bishop of the royal city of Chiapa which is in the Indies, a part of New Spain, and Dr. Gines de Sepulveda, chronicler to the Emperor, our lord, in which the doctor contended: that the conquests of the Indies against the Indians were lawful; and the bishop, on the contrary, contended and affirmed them to have been, and it was impossible for them not to be, tyrannies, unjust and iniquitous. Which question was examined and defended in the presence of many learned theologians and jurists in a council ordered by his Majesty to be held in the year one thousand and five hundred and fifty in the town of Valladolid. Year 1552.”
Here are some slides that correspond to these primary source documents.