Australian History - Great Depression worker experiences Source Usefulness

Engage your middle and high school students in critical historical thinking with this no-prep digital and printable resource focused on source analysis and usefulness skills. This ready-to-use activity examines the experiences of Australian workers during the Great Depression through compelling primary sources and structured analysis tasks.

Designed to build skills in evaluating source content and provenance, this is an ideal resource for Australian History, Civics & Citizenship, and Humanities classrooms.

Product Purpose and Benefits

This resource helps students:

✔️ Build historical thinking and source analysis skills

✔️ Understand the lived experiences of working-class Australians during the 1930s

✔️ Practice evaluating source usefulness based on content and provenance

✔️ Develop evidence-based written responses and critical reflection

✔️ Prepare for higher-order assessment tasks and inquiry-based learning

What’s Included in This Resource:

1. Editable Slide Deck – “Understanding Source Usefulness”

The lesson begins with a teacher-guided slide deck that introduces key concepts of source usefulness, including content and provenance, bias, perspective, and purpose, with sample questions, sentence starters, and modelled examples to support discussion and explicit teaching of historical thinking skills.

2. Source Evaluation Worksheet

After the slide deck, students apply their learning to a structured, scaffolded worksheet focused on two real sources.

Students are guided to:

• Evaluate each source’s content (what is being said/shown)
• Analyse the provenance (who, when, where, why)
• Make informed judgments about usefulness for understanding the event
• Use evidence to support their evaluation in a clear, written format

3. Source Usefulness Activity

Worksheet designed to deepen understanding.

This task encourages students to:

• Examine the surface and subtext of both sources
• Explore tone, language, and visual cues

• • Build confidence in engaging with unfamiliar source types