Twenty-Seven Sources, One Database

Source evaluation first. The paper's deadline makes it the dependency: a paper built on advocacy sites cannot be repaired by better discussion skills, but a student who has found and vetted evidence has something to say in a seminar. Fixing discussion before fixing sources would generate confident talk about bad evidence.

But read the six students carefully. Fourteen students cited a weak source, which is a judgment problem. Six could not explain how they found a cited source, which is a search problem-they may have taken a result from a feed without a trail. Those six need provenance and search instruction before they need evaluation criteria, and if she treats all twenty as one group she will reteach evaluation to students who already evaluate and simply never chose.

What she should not do: launch a general 'media literacy' unit. Five weeks and one database do not support it, and a broad unit tends to produce students who can recite evaluation criteria and still cite an aggregator. The instruction has to be attached to the sources they actually used.

Center the instruction on provenance, not on a checklist. A checklist ('is it .org? does it have a date?') is exactly what fails here-well-produced advocacy sites pass it.

Core routine - lateral reading:

1. Leave the source. Ask who is behind this, and check that elsewhere.
2. Ask who funds it and what it is trying to accomplish.
3. Ask what evidence is offered and whether it can be corroborated independently.
4. Only then read the page for content.

Working within the constraints:

• Use the sources students already submitted. Save them as PDFs or screenshots so the block list cannot stop the lesson mid-discussion.
• Build a class set of two or three sources on the same issue-one neutral, one advocacy, one aggregator-and have students rank and defend.
• Teach the single database well: advanced search, subject terms, and how to mine a good article's reference list for primary sources.
• Point students toward government and primary documents, which are free and often filter-proof.

Accountability: require a source dossier-author, publisher, funding, date, and one sentence on why it is credible for this claim. That converts the routine into something she can see and grade.

Read the silence correctly first. Nine non-speakers in a Socratic seminar usually lack either preparation, entry points, or safety-not willingness. Five students speaking 70% of the time is often a preparation artifact: they did the reading and everyone else is improvising. If so, the fix begins before the seminar.

Before:

• Written preparation-claim, two pieces of evidence, one question-checked at the door. No preparation, no seminar.
• Think-pair-share so every student has said the idea aloud once before it is public.

During:

• Opening round where each student contributes one prepared point before open discussion.
• Assigned roles: facilitator, evidence tracker, synthesizer, devil's advocate.
• Track airtime on a seating chart. A visible tally makes the pattern undeniable, to her and eventually to the class.

After:

• Assess with a rubric that scores building on a peer's point and citing evidence, not speaking frequency. If the rubric rewards volume, she is training the five students and confirming the nine in their silence.

For students with genuine anxiety or language barriers, accept a written contribution read aloud or a small-group seminar first. The goal is participation in the reasoning, not microphone time.