Create your own interactive learning activity.
Turn your students into historians with primary-source based activities. Provide them the unique web address for an activity, or compile a Classroom full of activities.
Each activity-creation tool helps students develop historical thinking skills. Pick documents, set up the activity, and write instructions for your students. You can include questions or an assignment in your conclusion. Students can submit and save their responses so that you can access them in My Students' Responses, or have them emailed to you if desired.
You may wish to follow our
Guide to Creating Your DocsTeach Activity. Once you've
registered for an account, create a new activity in My Activities.
Create a New Activity
Teach students the process of document analysis, the foundation for working with primary sources.
Showcase one document while posing a question, comment, or directions for students.
Display two to four documents to prompt students to observe and point out similarities and differences.
Intrigue students about a particular document and give them practice forming hypotheses.
Teach students to use visual cues and context to understand a document.
Highlight a specific part of a document.
Present primary sources and challenge students to sequence them based on careful document analysis.
Present primary sources as a string of documents and help students make connections among those documents and the historical events they illustrate.
Link primary sources to locations on a map to practice spatial thinking and understand the impact of geographic factors in history.
Pair documents concerning a historical event, concept, or figure with descriptions, questions, or other documents to impress upon students that the whole is derived of smaller parts.
Turn primary sources into historical evidence that students sort through and evaluate to draw historical conclusions.
Introduce students to primary source documents containing historical data and encourage them to consider the source, the presentation style, and the intended impact of the material.