Common Core LiteracyGrades 6–8History & Social Studies

RH.6-8.9: Primary and Secondary Sources Together

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.9 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

The Official Wording

Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 6-8, Reading: History & Social Studies · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RH.6-8.9 Means in Plain English

Students read a firsthand source and a later account of the same event and explain how they connect: where one confirms, explains or adds to the other. A survivor’s letter about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire meets a historian’s account of what followed.

Fifth grade (RI.5.9) combined facts from several texts on one topic. Grades 6 to 8 ask what kind of source each text is and what its writer could have known. Ninth and tenth grade (RH.9-10.9) compare how several primary and secondary sources treat one topic.

RH.6-8.9 I Can Statements

I can tell a primary source from a secondary source.
I can explain what each kind of source can and cannot know.
I can show where a secondary source confirms or adds to a primary one.

RH.6-8.9 Worked Example

Both sources agree the door was locked, and the weak answer stops there instead of asking what each source could know.

Read the Story

Primary source, an invented letter from a sewing-machine operator, March 1911, translated from Yiddish: We were putting on our coats when someone shouted fire. I ran to the stairway door on the Washington Place side, but it would not open, and girls were pounding on it and screaming.Primary source, continued: I went with the others to the elevator, and the operator came up again and again. I was in the last car that came down. Now they say the boss locked that door so we would not carry out scraps of cloth. I know only that it was locked.Secondary source, from a history book written for this page: The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York on March 25, 1911, killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women.Secondary source, continued: A door to one stairway on the ninth floor was locked, a common practice meant to stop theft, and the building’s only fire escape collapsed.Secondary source, continued: The owners were tried for manslaughter and found not guilty, but public anger led the state to form a Factory Investigating Commission, whose work produced dozens of new workplace safety laws.

A short passage written for this page.

Question: How do the two sources relate? What does each give that the other cannot, and where does one confirm or explain the other?

Not Yet“Both sources are about the Triangle fire. The first is a letter and the second is from a history book. They both say the door was locked.”It notices one point of agreement and stops. It never asks what each kind of source can and cannot know: the survivor knows the locked door firsthand, while the historian knows the death toll, the trial and the laws that followed.

Meets the Standard“The letter is a primary source: the writer pushed on the locked door and rode the last elevator down, so it gives details only an eyewitness has, but she can only repeat what she heard about why the door was locked. The secondary source confirms her central fact, that a stairway door was locked, and explains it as a common practice to stop theft. It adds the full death toll and what came after she wrote: the owners’ acquittal and the safety laws. Together they show both what the fire was like and why it mattered.”It labels each source, explains what each one can and cannot know, finds where the secondary confirms and explains the primary, and says what the pair shows together.

Question Stems to Use

Which source is primary and which is secondary? How do you know?What could the eyewitness know that the historian could not, and the reverse?Where does the secondary source confirm, correct or explain the primary one?What does the historian add that no one at the scene could have known yet?What do the two sources show together that neither shows alone?

Common Mistakes with RH.6-8.9

Listing what both say instead of how they relate

“Both say the door was locked.”

Try this: Have students finish three sentences for every pair: the secondary confirms, the secondary adds, and only the primary shows.

Trusting the eyewitness on everything

“The letter proves the boss locked the door to stop stealing.”

Try this: Ask students which parts the writer saw herself and which she only heard, and weigh the secondhand parts against other sources.

Treating the secondary source as the real story

“The history book has the facts, so we don’t need the letter.”

Try this: Ask what the history book cannot give, such as what the locked door felt like, and why historians still read firsthand letters.

Where RH.6-8.9 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.5.9Combine information from several texts on one topic to write or speak about it knowledgeably.

AlongsideRI.8.9Find where two texts on one topic disagree on facts or on interpretation.WHST.6-8.8Gather sources for a history project and judge each one’s credibility and accuracy.

Comes NextRH.9-10.9Compare how several primary and secondary sources treat the same topic.

Practice RH.6-8.9

Quick Check

Which source is primary, and why?
The letter, because its writer was inside the factory during the fire and wrote about it soon after.
What does the secondary source add that the survivor could not have known when she wrote?
What came later: the owners’ trial and acquittal and the safety laws that followed.
Where does the secondary source confirm the primary one?
Both say a stairway door was locked. The history book adds that locking doors was a common practice meant to stop theft.

RH.6-8.9: Other Names

RH.6-8.9CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.9