Historiography · Fact vs. interpretation · Grades 9–12
Premise: Students compare two historians who explain the Revolution differently (economic vs. ideological causes) using the same past. They practice distinguishing established facts from interpretations and judging arguments by the quality of evidence rather than by which conclusion is more appealing.
Students work the case and solve four locks (a fact-vs-interpretation MC, a name-the-lens word lock, a how-to-judge MC, and an interpretation-vs-fact evidence sort). Each lock reveals a short reasoning explanation. The answer key is not shown on this page.
Student activity: grade912/historian-student.html · ~10–15 minutes · works on tablets, laptops, and interactive whiteboards.
Skills & standards alignment
Content is aligned to these strands; the activity is a supporting resource, not a verbatim standard statement:
Texas TEKS · Social Studies skills (HS): distinguish fact from opinion and interpretation, and evaluate the validity of a source and its argument.
Texas TEKS · U.S. History: analyze multiple causes of major events and understand differing historical interpretations.
Common Core ELA/Literacy · RH.11–12.8: evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence.
Reasoning habit: distinguishing supported conclusions from unsupported guesses ("prove it from the clue").
💡 Teacher tip: This is the band's metacognitive keystone: interpretations are not "just opinions" — they are arguments judged by evidence. The confident-documentary decoy makes the point that presentation is not proof.