Today is rung 5 of 6 on this topic
Building a historical argument from documents
Can do: Reads a set of primary documents, weighs them, and writes a thesis-driven argument.
Why it matters
It's the assessed skill in high-school history and the transferable one: judging evidence written by people with interests.
What it looks like when it's wobbly
Summarises each document in turn instead of using them as evidence for a claim.
⏱️ Two-minute check
Give three documents. "What's your thesis, and which documents support it?"
Solid looks like: A thesis first, with documents deployed as evidence rather than described.
The full activity for this topic · 35 minutes
Sourcing Before Reading
- 1Before reading each document, note who wrote it, when, for whom, and why.
- 2Read and note what each claims, and what its author would want you to believe.
- 3Group documents by the position they support.
- 4Write a thesis that accounts for the disagreement rather than ignoring it.
- 5Draft one paragraph citing two documents in support and one that complicates it.
If it's too hard
Two documents with clearly opposing views.
If it's too easy
Include a document whose reliability is genuinely contested and argue about how much weight it deserves.
Say this
"Who wrote this and what did they want? Read the author before you read the text."