A classroom source comparison
A teacher prepares a fictional inquiry about a town’s industrial growth. Students receive a promotional leaflet from a factory owner, a worker’s diary excerpt, a map showing rail links and a later historian’s interpretation. The leaflet emphasizes jobs and prosperity; the diary describes long shifts and unsafe conditions. The map shows connection to a larger market but contains no wage or injury information. The historian cites additional records not reproduced in the packet. Students initially vote for the source they consider most trustworthy and propose using only that source in their final answer. The teacher wants an assessment that reveals sourcing, corroboration and causal reasoning rather than merely testing which document students prefer. All documents are invented summaries for the exercise, not archival quotations.
1. How should students use the sources together?
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Identify authors, purposes, dates and opportunities to know. The leaflet and diary illuminate different experiences; the map supports spatial claims. Compare evidence and limits instead of declaring one source universally true or false.
2. Propose a formative assessment.
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Ask students to make a limited claim, cite two differently situated sources, explain their reasoning and identify one missing record. Feedback can then target unsupported causal leaps or failure to distinguish perspective from factual accuracy.