Detailed source study

By studying one source closely, you can:

• learn what life was like during a particular period
  
• experience personal stories from the past
  
• explore a particular issue, event or person in detail
  
• identify and evaluate bias in a source
  
• illustrate how authors and artists construct their work
  
• identify the features of a source that can manipulate the viewer or reader.

The following activities are suggested approaches to studying individual primary and secondary sources in detail. They require some background knowledge on the period, people and events discussed in the activity – you can find links to helpful background information within this site in each of the resource kits in the right-hand menu.

Activity 1

In order to focus on evaluating a particular source, ask students to analyse a resource using the image or document analysis worksheets, or the evaluating sources worksheet. Remind students to think about:

• WHO? Who created the source? What kind of life did they lead?
  
• WHEN? When was the source created? What was happening at the time?
  
• WHY? Why was the source created? What was it used for?

Activity 2

Ask students to copy an image of their source into a Word™ or PowerPoint™ document. Using text boxes and arrows, students can then annotate the image, recording their observations and notes. Students could present their findings to the class and talk the group through their interpretation.

Activity 3

Y charts help students to think about the social and experiential evidence that some sources, images in particular, can give us. Ask students to divide a blank page into three sections by drawing a Y from corner to corner. Label each section:

• ‘Feels like' - how does the picture make you feel? What might you be feeling if you were standing in the picture?
  
• ‘Sounds like' - what might you hear if you were standing in the image?
  
• ‘Looks like' - what would you see around you if you were standing in the image?

Activity 4

Ask students to 'fill in the gaps' and/or ‘look outside the frame' of an image in a free writing or drawing response. Start them off by getting them to think about:

• Who are the people in the image? What might their lives be like?
  
• How might individual people in the image remember the event? Why would their observations be unique?
  
• What does the photographer or artist think about the people/landscape/event in the picture? What kind of person are they and what other images might they take?
  
• What happened after the photograph was taken?
  
• What's happening outside the borders of the image?
  
• Who might have been watching the artist/photographer and what did they think of the scene?