Final answer:
High school history classes primarily use primary and secondary sources. Historians evaluate sources based on their reliability and credibility.
Step-by-step explanation:
High school history classes primarily use two types of sources - primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are objects or documents that come directly from the time period being studied, such as government documents, diaries, letters, and photographs.
Secondary sources, on the other hand, are works written or produced after the time period being studied, such as histories and biographies written by later scholars.
To evaluate sources, historians look for clues that indicate their reliability and credibility. For primary sources, they consider factors such as the proximity to the events being studied and the potential biases of the creator.
For secondary sources, they look at the author's expertise, the presence of citations and references, and whether the work has been peer-reviewed.