Lesson plan adapted from the Digital Inquiry Group.

Learning Objective:

Students will analyze multiple eyewitness accounts and contextual evidence related to a lunchroom fight to determine who should be suspended. They will develop skills in sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating evidence, using these skills to evaluate the reliability of different pieces of evidence and to construct a coherent narrative of the event.

Essential Question:

How can we use multiple sources of evidence to accurately reconstruct and understand a controversial event?

The Lunch Room Fight:

Today you’re going to receive evidence from eyewitnesses and others connected to a fight in a lunchroom. Your job is to figure out who should get suspended for starting the fight. In order to figure that out, you’re going to need to source, contextualize, and corroborate. In other words, you’re going to need to read and compare multiple pieces of evidence in order to figure which are more reliable and how they all fit together to fill out the story of what happened in the lunchroom that day.

Materials Needed:

• Pencil/pen

• Handouts:

  • Lunchroom Fight: The Evidence

  • Lunchroom Fight: Evidence Context

  • Suspension Report

Directions:

1. Read through the headnote and all the evidence.

2. Identify pieces of context that sheds light on who started the fight.

3. Write each piece of context in the correct part of the first column of your handout.

   • For example: From the headnote we learn that Justin's father fired Max's mom and dad so we are going to write that in "Town Context."

4. Continue doing that for all evidence. You need to find at least TWO additional pieces of context for each of the areas of context.

5. We will review answers in 5 minutes.

6. Once we have discussed our answers as a class, we will fill in the second and third columns.

7. Discuss answers again.

8. Fill out the suspension report. Be prepared to share your answers.

Exit Ticket:

1. Head to your class padlet

   • Period 1

   • Period 6

2. Click the + underneath Exit Ticket 0.1

3. The subject should be your First and Last Name

4. Create a post answering the following questions:

   • What are the key steps you used to determine who should be suspended?

   • Was there any evidence you found to be unreliable? Why?

   • Reflect on the essential question: How can we use multiple sources of evidence to accurately reconstruct and understand a controversial event? Write a brief response based on your experience in this lesson.