One-off intervention
Use Modules 0–2 with a student who cannot yet distinguish source role, provenance or usefulness, then send them back into the class's current inquiry.
Kaiako companion · Years 12–13 · Mixed readiness
Using Evidence, Sources & Truth with senior learners
This unit is designed for a class where prior preparation is uneven. Some students may have strong source-analysis habits; others may have reached Year 12 or 13 without much previous History or Social Sciences work. The unit should close missing foundations without making senior students feel that they have been sent back to junior school.
Core teaching decision
Do not assign every module to every student by default. Use the diagnostic as a routing tool. The intended progression is mastery-based: students may skip content they can already justify, but not content they merely recognise.
Suggested deployment
20–30 min diagnostic→teacher glance / conference→targeted modules→Evidence Brief→transfer into current senior work
Independent catch-up
Assign the diagnostic and a bounded set of modules during study periods or while other students work on subject-specific content.
Whole-class reset
Use selected modules before a major inquiry or research task, especially Modules 4, 5 and 7 where even experienced students often rely on weak shortcuts.
Extension
Use the Year 13 prompts on historiography, methodology, archival power and AI mediation with students who have already mastered the foundation.
Diagnostic interpretation
| What the student does | Likely need | Suggested route |
|---|---|---|
| Labels items primary/secondary but cannot explain why the research question matters. | Source categories are memorised rather than relational. | Module 1, then Module 2. |
| Correctly classifies sources but writes “reliable because it is primary” or “unreliable because biased”. | Global quality labels are replacing analysis. | Modules 4 and 5. |
| Finds many web pages but cannot identify their upstream evidence or whether they are independent. | Research navigation and corroboration gap. | Modules 3 and 5. |
| Uses strong sources but rarely asks whose records are easiest to find or what the archive excludes. | Evidence-base / positionality extension. | Module 6. |
| Uses AI fluently but treats generated citations or summaries as evidentiary authority. | Provenance and mediation gap. | Modules 2 and 7. |
| Can justify all of the above. | No need to repeat foundations. | Move directly to Module 8 or the student's current inquiry. |
Misconceptions worth listening for
“Primary means true.”
Ask what the source creator could know, what they wanted, and what the source can establish for this exact question.
“Bias means unusable.”
Ask whether the bias or perspective is itself evidence. A partisan text may be weak neutral description but strong evidence of advocacy, framing or ideology.
“Three sites agree.”
Ask students to draw the provenance chain. If all three repeat one report, they may represent one evidentiary chain rather than three independent confirmations.
“I couldn't find it, so it didn't happen.”
Separate absence in the student's search from absence in the historical or social world. Ask about preservation, indexing, access and forms of knowledge.
“AI found the source.”
Require the student to open the source, check that it exists, and inspect whether it actually supports the claim.
“The AI answer is the source.”
If the inquiry concerns the underlying historical/social claim, trace home. If the inquiry concerns what an AI system itself produced or framed, the saved output may instead become primary evidence for that different question.
Do not confuse self-direction with no teaching
A student who skips a module should be able to demonstrate the underlying reasoning. A student who is stuck should not be left to reread the same page indefinitely. A two-minute conference — “show me what this source can establish and what it cannot” — is often enough to locate the real gap.
Formative evidence to collect
Keep this light. The aim is to know whether the bridge changed students' later work, not to create an assessment burden.
- which diagnostic route each student took;
- one misconception visible before intervention;
- one later piece of source reasoning showing whether that misconception changed;
- whether students can distinguish source role from source quality;
- whether corroboration is genuinely independent;
- whether AI-mediated claims are traced to inspectable evidence;
- which module students found unnecessarily easy, unclear or missing.
Evidence of classroom use
Do not fill this in prospectively as if it already happened. After real classroom use, record only what can be evidenced:
- Date / class: when and with whom was the bridge used?
- Need: what learner problem triggered its use?
- Route: which modules were actually used or skipped?
- Observation: what did students continue to find difficult?
- Transfer: did later source analysis improve, and what work shows that?
- Feedback: what did the associate/mentor teacher or students say?
- Revision: what changed in the resource because of that evidence?
Teaching the unit is the only real test of it. What you record here is evidence about your class, not a rating of the resource — note what happened, change the unit in response, and the next cohort gets a better bridge.
Useful learner tools
- Source Analysis Matrix — slow down one difficult source.
- Trace the Claim Home — reconstruct an evidence chain behind a mediated claim.
- Evidence Brief Template — capstone and transfer into current coursework.