Historywith

Lesson Objectives

• To use bias sources to suggest what really happened.

Learning Ladder

L5: Use observations to develop an account of what might have actually happened.

L4: Explain why their accounts differed.

L3: Describe what each character said about the incident.

Hi, Chief Wiggum here, young Bart

Simpson has been run over by Old Man

Burns. It’s a classic case of DOA;Driven-Over

Adolescence. As the top cop in town, it’s down to me to

find out what happened.

There are two types of evidence PRIMARY and SECONDARY.

Lucky for us, we have two pieces of PRIMARY

evidence.

Do you know why it’s better to have

PRIMARY evidence?

As Bart is the victim, we’ll start with his

story.

Testimony #1

Bart Simpson (Victim)

Write down Bart’s side of the story.

He must be telling the truth – he was the

victim after all. Am I right?

Now it’s time for Mr Burns’ side of the story.

Testimony #2

Montgomery Burns (Perpetrator)

Write down Burns’ side of the story.

That was a pretty convincing story, and he is the richest man in town, surely he was

telling the truth?

Who is telling the truth?Write your answer in your book and explain your

reasoning

They can’t both be tellingthe truth, can they?

Can you give examples of bias in these

sources?

As the top cop in town, I think we need to find out a little bit more

about these characters – that should help us

decide whether they are telling the truth.

Divide your page in half and write as many things about these two characters as you can think of. This will help us

to work out how likely they are to tell the truth.

Can we trust either of these guys? I don’t think we can, so the

best thing that we can do is look for

similarities between their testimonies.

Make a list of the similarities between

the testimonies.

Why are we doing this?

Using your list of similarities, write a report of your own

stating what you think really happened.

What really happened...

How accurate was your account? Give yourself

a mark out of 10 for accuracy (10 being the most accurate and 1

being the least)