Secondary sources in a history class are necessary in delivering the necessary information to students in an efficient way. They are meant to work in conjunction with the use of primary sources in instruction. A class taught completely with primary sources may feel scattered and without direction, while a class taught solely with secondary sources may lack depth and use of analysis. Secondary sources are the lines that connect the dots that are the primary sources. With that said, students’ comfort level with secondary sources can greatly impact their understanding of history and ultimately their performance on the AP exam.

How is this related to the exam?

Secondary sources show up in the exam in various sections. They can appear scattered through the multiple choice section. Students will need to have enough reading comprehension to know what event or development a historian is writing about to answer a set of questions. There is also a short answer question devoted solely to the use of secondary sources. In this question students are asked to read two different historian accounts on the same event and identify a difference in their arguments.

Increasing students’ reading comprehension is the best way to help students in these parts of the exam and the best way to increase reading comprehension is through repeated reading practice. It can be intimidating for students to jump right into a secondary source by themselves which it is a good practice to start with a teacher reading out loud and progress into students working together on an essay and finally into individual work.

How can secondary sources be implemented in daily instruction?

The APUSHslides notes packets make use of many secondary source essays and students deconstruct the essay’s argument using the same format each time. The table provided in each argument deconstruction activity is adapted from a table published in a College Board professional development booklet.

In the table, students have to identify the thesis, claims made throughout the essay and evidence that backs those claims. Laying it out in separate boxes, students can easily see that the evidence they’ve listed backs the claims they found, and that the claims support the overall thesis. To help increase critical thinking, the last two boxes ask students to identify an alternative argument or point of view to the one provided by the author. Finally they have to answer if the author has refuted or conceded to the alternative viewpoint through the essay.

All of this will help students become comfortable at finding the relevant information in a secondary source. It will also help them in writing DBQs and LEQs as they can emulate the formatting of other historical writings they’ve encountered.

Which secondary sources should be used?

There’s not a wrong answer to this question. It can be as simple as using a subsection from students’ textbook or finding some online. The Gilder Lehrman AP US History Study Guide site (ap.gilderlehrman.org) has a variety of essays to choose from, organized by historical periods. This is where most of the secondary sources that are in the APUSHslides notes packets come from. In choosing an essay students can equally benefit from one about a specific event or development in the period, or a more general overview of a decade or era. It is always best to go by what the historical topic in the AP Course and Exam Description requires.

The great part about using the notes packets from APUSHslides is that you can count on secondary sources to appear regularly throughout the course and the essays have been matched up with the most relevant historical topics.

Examples from APUSHslides notes:

One of the memorable essays used in the notes is in #68 - 7.9 The Great Depression. The notes include an essay by David Kennedy, Emeritus Professor at Stanford. Students might recognize Kennedy’s name if their school uses The American Pageant textbook. The notes and the video are below.