Thinking about Evidence

vs.

How do we know what we know?

If you were developing a court case, which would you use? Why?

Primary Sources• First hand testimony• Direct evidence• Created at the time an

event occurs

Secondary Sources• Discusses information that

originally was presented elsewhere• Analyze, synthesize,

interpret, evaluate, explain

Primary Source Evidence – it is 2055 and a historian wants to learn about teens in 2015 …

• diaries and journals • e-mails or FB posts• VISA and other credit card bills • home movies • photographs • school records • school work • clothing

• music • court records • census records • birth, marriage and death records • trash and e-waste• sports articles or other things in

the paper

What type of records are created daily about a person’s life, and might be preserved for that historian to find?

What could a historian learn from each of

these things?

Choose three sources that would give the historian of

the future THE BEST understanding of teens in

2015

Primary Source Evidence

• Record everything you did in the last 24 hours

• Put a checkmark () beside any item for which there will be a trace.

• How many of the traces were accidental? (A) How many were purposeful? (P)

• How many of these traces will likely be preserved? Circle those.

Primary Source Evidence

DISCUSS:• How well do those final traces

represent your life?

• What would someone determine about you if they only saw those traces that were purposeful?

• What details are added in by your accidental traces?

Consider this:What might be some of the

challenges historians face when looking at evidence?

When examining evidence ASK:

• Who created it?• Why did they create it?• What’s their bias or point of

view?

"I left a trace" activity from The Big Six p. 50

How does the “past” become “history”?

•The PAST vs. •HISTORY

Be the detective - What can we learn by looking at the evidence left behind?• As a class, let’s look at the first

room and answer the questions

• Now practice in another room.

1. What do you see? Make a detailed list.

2. What sorts of conclusions might you make from what you are seeing?

3. What new questions might you ask about the “traces” they left behind?

What if we are reading the source? What questions would you have to ask so you could learn from it?

• Who created the source?• When and where?• What was happening at that time and

place?• Who was the intended audience?• AND, why are you using this source?• What are the details you can take

from the source?

• Knowing the answers to these questions can help

you decide HOW to interpret the information.

The married couple with the torch would probably have warned the police: it was Sunday evening, Easter Sunday, no one at the office on Easter Monday, so none of us could budge until Tuesday morning. Think of it, waiting in such fear for two nights and a day! No one had anything to suggest, so we simply sat there in pitch-darkness, because Mrs. Van Daan in her fright had unintentionally turned the lamp right out; talked in whispers, and at every creak one heard “Sh! sh!”It turned half past ten, eleven, but not a sound; Daddy and Van Daan joined us in turns. Then a quarter past eleven, a bustle and noise downstairs. Everyone’s breath was audible, otherwise no one moved. Footsteps in the house, in the private office, kitchen, then . . . on our staircase. No one breathed audibly now, footsteps on our staircase, then a rattling of the swinging cupboard. This moment is indescribable. “Now we are lost!” I said, and could see us all being taken be the Gestapo that very night.Twice they rattled at the cupboard, then there was nothing, the footsteps withdrew, we were saved so far. A shiver seemed to pass from one to another, I heard someone’s teeth chattering, no one said a word.

Diary of A Young Girl, excerpt - 1952

Primary or Secondary? Handwritten Letter, 19th C.

Collection of Personal Letters

Birth Certificate, certifiedBiography of

George Washington

George Washington (Lansdowne portrait) by

Gilbert Stuart, oil on canvas, 1796