Best for
Junior secondary source work, support groups, first attempts at historical judgement, and classes using short extracts, images, posters, or speeches.
Aotearoa histories • English • Years 8-10 • High scaffold
Quick Primary Source Analysis Template
Use this quick template when students are still learning how to analyse a source without getting lost in the process. It chunks the work into four manageable moves with sentence starters, bilingual headings, and enough space to think on paper.
Free scaffold, premium adaptation path
This version is ready to print. Te Wānanga becomes useful when you want the same worksheet rewritten for younger readers, ELL learners, bilingual classes, or a local source set from your community.
- Generate simpler sentence starters or stronger extension prompts.
- Swap in your own source excerpt while keeping the same structure.
- Save class-specific copies into My Kete for reuse and revision.
Kaiako planning snapshot
- Use length: 20-30 minutes for one source or 40 minutes if you model the process first.
- Grouping: Think-pair-write works best so students can rehearse language before committing it to the page.
- Prep: Pre-teach 3-5 key terms and choose a short, readable source with one main idea.
- Teaching move: Keep students close to the source. Ask “What makes you say that?” whenever they drift into unsupported opinion.
- Support / stretch: Use the sentence starters for support; extension students can add a corroboration source and a second judgement sentence.
Resources already provided
- Student identification fields for clean printing and collection
- Step-by-step provenance, message, perspective, and judgement prompts
- Sentence starters for support learners
- Write-on space sized for a short but complete response
- A matching teacher-only curriculum companion
This page is designed for “teach this tomorrow” clarity. If the lesson says students need a scaffolded source worksheet, that worksheet already exists here.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga / Learning Intentions
- We are learning how to identify the basic details of a source.
- We are learning how to explain the main message and perspective in a source.
- We are learning how to make a short historical judgement using evidence.
Paearu Angitu / Success Criteria
- I can state who made the source and who it was for.
- I can describe what the source is saying or showing.
- I can write one evidence-based judgement about the source.
Curriculum integration / Te Marautanga alignment
The companion page makes the curriculum fit explicit around early source analysis, text interpretation, evidence use, and noticing perspective in Social Studies and English.
He whakaaro matua / Big reminder
A source tells you something important, but it never tells you everything. Good historians ask what the source shows clearly and what still needs another voice beside it. Through a mātauranga Māori lens, that also means valuing oral, community, and whakapapa-based knowledge alongside formal written records.
1. Source details
Type of source: letter, photo, speech, poster, article, document, other
Who made it? When?
2. Main message
What is the source mostly trying to say, show, or make people believe?
3. Perspective
Whose voice is strongest here? Whose voice or experience is missing or pushed to the side?
4. Historical judgement
Finish this sentence: This source helps me understand...
Sentence starters
Source details
- This source was created by...
- The intended audience was probably...
- The time period matters because...
Perspective and judgement
- The source seems to favour...
- A voice that is missing is...
- This source is useful because...
Stretch move
Name one other source you would place beside this one, and say what you would compare.
Tautoko / Support
- Read the source aloud and annotate it together first.
- Let students answer using oral rehearsal before writing.
- Accept bullet points before full sentences if working memory is a barrier.
Whakawhānui / Extend
- Add a second source for comparison.
- Ask students to explain why interpretation could shift over time.
- Move into the deep template for a fuller inquiry write-up.
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
Social Sciences — Tikanga ā-Iwi
Level 3–4: Investigate how historical, political, and economic processes shape societies; understand how people participate in communities to create change; analyse different perspectives on social, cultural, and environmental issues.
English — Research and Literacy
Level 3–4: Gather, evaluate, and synthesise information from multiple sources; construct well-reasoned arguments using evidence; communicate social science understanding clearly in written, oral, and visual forms.
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
Social Sciences taught well in Aotearoa should be uncomfortable — because the history of this land is one in which Māori and other communities have faced injustice, and in which those injustices are not yet fully addressed. Mātauranga Māori offers frameworks for thinking about social change that go beyond Western political theory: the concept of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), of kotahitanga (unity in purpose), of utu (reciprocity across time) — these are not abstract ideas but working tools for analysing how power has been distributed and how it might be redistributed more justly. Social Sciences that centres these frameworks gives students the analytical vocabulary to name what they see in the world and imagine what could be different.
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
This handout is designed to be used alongside the broader unit resources available at Te Kete Ako handouts library. Related resources from the same unit are linked in the unit planner. All resources are provided — no additional preparation is required to use this handout in your classroom.