A class asks what happened during a harbor fire. Four sources describe it: a dockworker's diary from that week, a novel published sixty years later, a textbook chapter, and a magazine article written a century later. Which one is the primary source?

A student compares a dockworker's diary from the week of a harbor fire with a novel written sixty years later. Why is the diary stronger evidence about the fire itself?

A company that sells bottled water publishes a report saying its own factory does no harm to the local river. What weakens the credibility of that report?

A student finds the same detail about a bridge collapse in an engineer's report and in an unrelated newspaper account from the same week. What has the student done by matching them?

A soldier's letter describes a battle only from where he stood, and it never claims to cover the whole field. What does this letter mainly show?

Two eyewitnesses to a market riot give crowd sizes that differ by hundreds of people. What is the most reliable next step for a student writing about the riot?

A student writes that a canal helped farmers reach distant markets. Another student writes that the canal mostly helped city merchants instead. What is the second statement called?

At the end of a history report a student lists the author, title and date of every book and article used. What is the purpose of that list?

A student copies three sentences from a website into a report and does not name the website anywhere. What is this called?

A report quotes a sentence and adds the name of the historian who wrote it and the book it came from. What is that practice called?

A tax list from a village records how many households owned oxen in one year. Which question can this source best support?

Archaeologists dig up a clay cooking pot at a settlement site. Why does the pot count as a primary source about that settlement?

A historian reads two hundred soldiers' letters and then writes a book explaining what daily camp life was like. How should that book be classified?

For a report on a mining accident a student compares a museum article with a named author, a date and a source list against a web page with no author and no date. Which is more reliable, and why?

A pamphlet about a land dispute calls one group hardworking settlers and the other group greedy troublemakers throughout. What does this word choice signal?

A primary source written by an eyewitness can still contain bias.

Two sources that did not copy from each other give the same date for a flood. What does that agreement establish about the date?

A class wants to know whether a river below a mill is polluted. One source is the mill owner's own statement, and the other is a water test by an independent inspector. Which better answers the question?

A merchant's account praises a new canal while a farmer whose fields were flooded for it condemns the canal. What best explains the difference between the two accounts?

A student's report states that a village grew after a road was built, and the only source given is the student's own guess. What is missing from the claim?