ABSTRACT

In order for students to analyze documents successfully, they first need to understand the difference between primary and secondary sources. Fortunately, teaching students to distinguish between primary and secondary sources is easy. First, students need to understand that, like the word fiction, which refers to a wide variety of literature, nonfiction encompasses a wide variety of factual texts. Examples of nonfiction texts include newspapers and research articles, encyclopedia entries, textbooks, diagrams, maps, charts, graphs, political cartoons, photographs, directions, biographies, autobiographies, and personal memoirs. Second, students need to understand that nonfiction texts are comprised of two broad types of sources: primary and secondary. Primary sources are created by people who have first-hand knowledge of a topic or event. Visual texts are extremely effective for helping students quickly and easily learn how to distinguish between primary and secondary sources.