92024 · Primary sources

• Histories are constructed

  A narrative about the past is made by selecting evidence and arranging it to answer a question. Two honest historians can write different histories of Parihaka because they asked different questions and sat with different sources. The past happened; the history is the account. 92024 assesses how you sit with the sources, not whether you can retell a finished textbook story.

• Primary means connection, not dust

  A 2020 oral-history interview with someone who marched in 1975 is still a primary source for that march. A 1881 newspaper printed the next morning is primary for the invasion of Parihaka. A 2024 textbook paragraph about either event is secondary. Age is a clue, not the test. Ask: does this source have a deep connection to the context, or is it already someone else’s history of the context?

• The focus question does the selecting

  “Tell me about the New Zealand Wars” is a topic, not a question. “How did Waikato tāngata whenua experience raupatu after 1864?” can drive selection, because a source is either useful for that experience or it is not. Kaiako may give you the question, or you may shape it together. Either way, every source you keep has to earn its place against that question.

• Engaging is more than collecting

  Achieved work selects a variety, annotates why each source is relevant, and identifies a strength or limitation where it matters. Merit interprets main ideas and explains strengths and limitations. Excellence looks across the set: how the sources speak to each other, what they leave silent, and what that does to the history you could write. Collecting ten printouts is not engaging.

• Variety is kind, not count

  Five newspaper clippings from the same paper in the same week are not a variety. A letter, a photograph, a waiata, a map and an oral account are. The standard names oral traditions, artefacts, different written types and different visual types because historians do not live on one kind of evidence. Later units teach how to handle each kind without flattening it.

• The same document can change status

  Primary is a relationship to this question, not a permanent stamp on the paper. A 1951 union history of the 1913 waterfront is secondary for 1913: it is already someone’s later account of that dispute. The same book can be primary for how 1951 watersiders remembered an earlier fight — the connection is 1951 memory-work, not 1913 itself. Before you file a document, name the question. Status follows the question; it does not travel with the binding.

• Official is not the same as primary

  A 2024 Ministry webpage about the 1893 franchise campaign is official, current, and still secondary. It is already a history of the sources. The surviving 1893 petition sheet — headings, signatures, the public ask that reached Parliament — is primary for that campaign. Official paper from the time can be primary; official paper about the time is usually not. Ask what the document is connected to, not whether a government logo sits on it.

• A copy is not a new kind

  Five photocopies of one 1893 petition sheet are still one written kind. Variety is kind, not reprint count. A constructed pack that holds a petition sheet, a contemporary cartoon, a later textbook paragraph and a photograph of the $10 note mixes kinds — and two of those items are already later histories or commemorations, not extra primary sheets. Photocopying does not invent a new voice. If you can stack the pages and they still say the same thing in the same way, you have not yet built a variety.

• This is not your assessed submission

  Your school internal is a supervised piece of work on a context your kaiako sets, with authenticity rules attached. Whetū is preparation: you practise selection, annotation and judgement on packs we give you. Do not paste a Whetū paragraph into the work you submit. The standard is assessing your engagement, not ours.

• Kind does the work that count cannot

  Variety is a claim about types of connection, not about how many printouts you found. Two letters, a diary and a newspaper are still written sources; they may differ in purpose, but they all ask you to read words on a page. Add a photograph, a recorded kōrero and a badge, and the collection can show public print, private voice, image and object. That is the mix the standard is after.

Internal · marked per part.

This is an internal achievement standard. There is no sit-down exam paper in Whetū.

6 authored Learn units for this standard.

• What historians do with sources

  This standard is not a test of how many facts you can remember about a topic. It asks you to engage with a variety of primary sources in one historical context. A history is constructed. Someone chose which voices to keep, which to leave out, and which question those voices were made to answer. Your job is to do that choosing on purpose, then show your thinking.

• A variety of primary sources

  A variety of primary sources is a set of different kinds, not a thicker folder of the same kind. A newspaper, a second newspaper and a third clipping from the same week are still one type of evidence: public print, written for readers at the time. The standard names different written types, different visual types, oral traditions and artefacts because each kind holds a different part of the past.

• Selecting sources for a focus question

  Selection starts before you print anything. A focus question is specific enough that a source can fail it. “The Dawn Raids” is a topic: every interesting document looks relevant and you cannot say why you kept it. “How did Pacific families and the Polynesian Panthers respond to dawn raids in Auckland in the mid-1970s?” can drive a collection, because a source either helps you see that response or it does not.

• Annotating relevance and main ideas

  A annotation is a short note that shows what a source is doing for the focus question. It is not a rewrite of the page, and it is not a highlight with no comment. If someone could peel your note off and stick it on a different source without changing a word, it is not an annotation yet.

• Strengths and limitations

  A strength or limitation is a judgement about what a source can and cannot do for the focus question. It is not a stamp that says “true” or “useless”, and it is not the word “bias” used as a slogan. A HART leaflet from 1981 is strong for protester purpose and limited for police orders. Both of those sentences are judgements. “This source is biased” is not, until you say of what, for whom, and why it matters to the question.

• Connecting a collection of sources

  To examine a collection is to look at the set as a set. You have already selected, annotated relevance, named main ideas, and judged strengths and limitations on the items. Excellence asks a further kind of thinking: how the sources speak to each other, where they clash, what they leave silent together, and what that does to the history you could write.

36 Practise questions in “Primary sources”. Feedback here is formative and is not an official NCEA grade.

• Primary and secondary sources

  Tell a primary source from a secondary one by connection, not age

• A variety of sources

  Variety is kind — oral, written, visual, material — not a bigger pile

• The focus question

  A question that can actually decide which sources belong

• Annotating relevance

  A note that shows why the source matters to the question

• Strengths and limitations

  Judge value where it matters, not a ritual ‘bias’ comment

• The collection as a whole

  Look across the set: connections, gaps and what they do together

Sample questions

1. Which statement is the most useful test for whether a source is primary for a historical context?
2. A historian records an oral-history interview in 2020 with someone who walked from Te Hāpua in 1975. For this question, what is that interview?
3. Match each source to the most accurate description of its connection to the context.
4. In a sentence or two, explain why that chapter is a secondary source for this context, and what kind of source would be primary instead.
5. A student selects five clippings from the same newspaper in the same week about the 1981 Springbok Tour. Why is that not a variety of primary sources?
6. Which collection best shows a variety of primary sources for that question?
7. Match each kind of primary source to an example that belongs in that kind.
8. Which changes would turn this pile into a variety that can actually engage with the Dawn Raids? Select all that apply.

Practise 92024 in Whetū