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Chapter 1 An Introduction to Primary Sources I love old documents. I always have. Older letters, photos, drawings, maps, and films have always fascinated me. I get lost in them, putting myself in the moment, looking for details that place them uniquely in time, comparing aspects of them to today, and wondering about the people or moment in the source. That excitement was probably why years ago, when I came across digitized his- torical resources from the Library of Congress, I couldn’t wait to bring them to my fifth-grade students. I soon ran into a problem. I had no idea how to help students interact with these types of sources. As much as I hoped my students would be as enamored with the documents as I was, that didn’t happen. Instead, the lesson fell flat, my students were disinterested, and I became disenchanted with using these resources with my students. Sometime later, I was able to attend an institute that opened my eyes. What I was missing were strategies for my students to use to analyze primary sources. I left the best professional development of my life, ready to redeem myself and excited to bring these artifacts to my students. At this point, I was in the library of my elementary school and had the opportunity to begin using resources with students from kindergarten through fifth grade. The results were better than I expected. As my students began interacting with pri- mary sources, the first thing I noticed was the engagement. Students who often stayed in the background were offering their voices to discussions in the library. Others who were easily distracted were drawn into the learning more than I had seen before. The second benefit that I saw was the deep levels of thinking my students demonstrated. Connections to other learning and their own lives played a role as stu- dents made meaning from these historical artifacts. Thought-provoking questions that I would not have anticipated were posed by my youngest students. Lastly, stu- dents collaborated in ways that were new to me. Not only did they work together but they also listened to each other and built upon each other’s ideas. But those results didn’t happen the first time my students used primary sources or even the second. Instead, the benefits slowly revealed themselves. Over time, I came to realize that part of the reason was that it took them time to learn how to interact with primary sources and each other in new ways. The 1